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MARK TWAIN'S
SPEECHES

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS

NEW YORK AND LONDON

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS

I 9 IO

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Published June, 1910
Printed in the United States 0/ America

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CONTENTS

PAGE

Introduction . . . vii /

Prbpacb ix ^

Thb Story op a Speech i v

Plymouth Rock and the Pilgrims 17 »

Compliments and Degrees 25

Books, Authors, and Hats 31

Dedication Speech 41

Die Schrbckbn dbr Dbutschbn Sprachb 42

•Thb Horrors op the German Language .... 43

German por the Hungarians 52

A New German Word 55

Unconscious Plagiarism 56

>*Thb Weather 59

f The Babies 64

Our Children and Great Discoveries 69

Educating Theatre-Goers 71

The Educational Theatre 74

Poets as Policemen 77

Pudd'nhbad Wilson Dramatized 78

„ Daly Theatre 79

The Dress op Civilized Woman 83

Dress Reform and Copyright 85

College Girls 90

Girls 92

The Ladies 94

iii

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CONTENTS

PAOB

Woman's Press Club 99

Votbs for Women 101

Woman — An Opinion . 104

Advice to Girls 107

Taxes and Morals 108

*Tammany and Croker 114

Municipal Corruption 118

Municipal Government 123

China and the Philippines 128

Theoretical and Practical Morals 130

Layman's Sermon 136

University Settlement Society 140

Public Education Association 144

Education and Citizenship 147

Courage 151

The Dinner to Mr. Choatb 152

On Stanley and Livingstone 154

Henry M. Stanley 157

Dinner to Mr. Jerome 160

Henry Irving 162

Dinner to Hamilton W. Mabie 165

Introducing Nye and Riley 168

Dinner to Whitelaw Re id 171

Rogers and Railroads 175

The Old-Pashioned Printer y . 182

Society op American Authors 186

Reading-Room Opening 189

Literature 191

Disappearance op Literature 193

The New York Press Club Dinner 197

The Alphabet and Simplified Spelling .... 199

Spelling and Pictures 204

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CONTENTS

PAGE

Books and Burglars 213

Authors' Club 215

Booksellers 218

"Mark Twain's First Appearance" 221

-Morals and Memory 224

Queen Victoria 238

Joan op Arc 241

Accident Insurance — Etc 249

Osteopathy 252

Water-Supply 256

Mistaken Identity 258

Cats and Candy 262

Obituary Poetry 265

Cigars and Tobacco 266

Billiards 269

The Union Right or Wrong? 270

An Ideal French Address 274

Statistics 276

Galveston Orphan Bazaar 279

San Francisco Earthquake 282

Charity and Actors 284

Russian Republic 286

Russian Sufferers 288

Wattbrson and Twain as Rebels 295

Robert Fulton Fund 298

Fulton Day, Jamestown 304

Lotos Club Dinner in Honor of Mark Twain . 310

In Aid of the Blind 322

Dr. Mark Twain, Farmbopath . 333

Missouri University Speech 338

Business 341

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CONTENTS

i-S

PAGE

Carnegie the Benefactor 345

n Poetry, Veracity, and Suicide 347

Welcome Home 351

An Undelivered Speech 359

Sixty-Seventh Birthday 363

To THE WHITEFRIARS 375

The Ascot Gold Cup 384

The Savage Club Dinner 386

General Miles and the Dog 393

When in Doubt, Tell the Truth 397

The Day Wb Celebrate 402

Independence Day 405

Americans and the English 413

About London 417

Princeton 423

The St. Louis Harbor-Boat "Mark Twain". . . 423

Seventieth Birthday 425

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INTRODUCTION

THESE speeches will address themselves to
the minds and hearts of those who read
them, but not with the effect they had with those
who heard them; Clemens himself would have
said, not with half the effect. I have noted else-
where how he always held that the actor doubled
the value of the author's words; and he was a
great actor as well as a great author. He was a
most consummate actor, with this difference from
other actors, that he was the first to know the
thoughts and invent the fancies to which his
voice and action gave the color of life. Repre-
sentation is the art of other actors; his art was
creative as well as representative ; it was nothing
at second hand.

I never heard Clemens speak when I thought
he quite failed; some burst or spurt redeemed
him when he seemed flagging short of the goal, and,
whoever else was in the running, he came in ahead.
His near-failures were the error of a rare trust to
the spontaneity in which other speakers confide,
or are believed to confide, when they are on their
feet. He knew that from the beginning of oratory

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INTRODUCTION

the orator's spontaneity was for the silence and
solitude of the closet where he mused his words
to an imagined audience; that this was the use of
orators from Demosthenes and Cicero up and
down. He studied every word and syllable, and
memorized them by a system of mnemonics pe-
culiar to himself, consisting of an arbitrary ar-
rangement of things on a table — knives, forks,
salt-cellars; inkstands, pens, boxes, or whatever
was at hand — which stood for points and clauses
and climaxes, and were at once indelible diction
and constant suggestion. He studied every tone
and every gesture, and he forecast the result with
the real audience from its result with that imag-
ined audience. Therefore, it was beautiful to see
him and to hear him; he rejoiced in the pleasure
he gave and the blows of surprise which he dealt;
and because he had his end in mind, he knew when
to stop.

I have been talking of his method and manner;
the matter the reader has here before him; and
it is good matter, glad, honest, kind, just.

W. D. Howells.

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PREFACE

From the Preface to the English Edition op
"Mark Twain's, Sketches"

IF I were to sell the reader a barrel of molasses, and
he, instead of sweetening his substantial din-
ner with the same at judicious intervals, should
eat the entire barrel at one sitting, and then abuse ,
me for making him sick, I would say that he de-
served to be made sick for not knowing any better
how to utilize the blessings this world affords,
And if I sell to the reader this volume of non-
sense, and he, instead of seasoning his graver
reading with a chapter of it now and then, when
his mind demands such relaxation, unwisely over-
doses himself with several chapters of it at a single
sitting, he will deserve to be nauseated, and he
will have nobody to blame but himself if he is.
There is no more sin in publishing an entire volume
of nonsense than there is in keeping a candy-store
with no hardware in it. It lies wholly with the
customer whether he will injure himself by means
of either, or will derive from them the. benefits
which they will afford him if he uses their pos-
sibilities judiciously.

Respectfully submitted,

The AuTHORf-

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

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MARK TWAIN'S
SPEECHES

THE STORY OF A SPEECH

An address delivered in 1877, and a review of it
twenty-nine years later. The original speech was deliv-
ered at a dinner given by the publishers of The Atlantic
Monthly in honor of the seventieth anniversary of the
birth of John Greenleaf Whittier, at the Hotel Bruns-
wick, Boston, December 17, 1877.

THIS is an occasion peculiarly meet for the
digging up of pleasant reminiscences concern-
ing literary folk; therefore I will drop lightly into
history myself. Standing here on the shore of the
Atlantic and contemplating certain of its largest
literary billows, I am reminded of a thing which
happened to me thirteen years ago, when I had
just succeeded in stirring up a little Nevadian
literary puddle myself, whose spume-flakes were
beginning to blow thinly Californiaward. I start-
ed an inspection tramp through the southern
mines of California. I was callow and conceited,

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

and I resolved to try the virtue of my nom de
guerre.

I very soon had an opportunity. I knocked
at a miner's lonely log cabin in the foot-hills
of the Sierras just at nightfall. It was snow-
ing at the time. A jaded, melancholy man of
fifty, barefooted, opened the door to me. When
he heard my nom de guerre he looked more dejected
than before. He let me in — pretty reluctantly, I
thought — and after the customary bacon and
beans, bladk coffee and hot whiskey, I took a pipe.
This sorrowful man had not said three words up
to this time. Now he spoke up and said, in the
voice of one who is secretly suffering, " You're the
fourth — I'm going to move." 'The fourth what ?"
said I. "The fourth littery man that has been
here in twenty-four hours — I'm going to move."
"You don't tell me!" said I; "who were the
others?" "Mr. Longfellow, Mr. Emerson, and
Mr. Oliver Weiidell Holmes — consound the lot!"

You can easily believe I was interested. I sup-
plicated — three hot whiskeys did the rest — and
finally the melancholy miner began. Said he:

'They came hete just at dark yesterday even-
ing, and I let them in of course. Said they were
going to the Yosemite. They were a rough lot, but
that's nothing ; everybody looks rough that travels
afoot. Mf. Emerson was a seedy little bit of a
chap, red-headed. Mr. Holmes was as fat as a
balloon; he weighed as miich as three hundred,

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THE STORY OF A SPEECH

and had double chins all the way down to his
stomach. Mr. Longfellow was built like a prize-
fighter. His head was cropped and bristly, like
as if he had a wig made of hair-brushes. His nose
lay straight down his face, like a finger with the
end joint tilted up. They had been drinking, I
could see that. .And what queer talk they used!
Mr. Holmes inspected this cabin, then he took me
by the buttonhole, and says he:

"'Through the deep caves of thought
I hear a voice that sings,
Build thee more stately mansions,
O my soul!'

"Says I, 'I can't afford it, Mr. Holmes, and
moreover I don't want to.' Blamed if I liked it
pretty well, either, coming from a stranger, that
way. However, I started to get out my bacon
and beans, when Mr. Emerson came and looked
on awhile, and then he takes me aside by the
buttonhole and says:

"'Give me agates for my meat;
Give me cantharids to eat;
From air and ocean bring me foods,
From all zones and altitudes.'

"Says I, 'Mr. Emerson, if you'll excuse me, this
ain't no hotel.' You see it sort of riled me — I
warn't used to the ways of littery swells. But I
went on a-sweating over my work, and next comes

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Mr. Longfellow and buttonholes me, and inter-
rupts me. Says he:

"'Honor be to Mudjekeewis!

You shall hear how Pau-Puk-Keewis — *

"But I broke in, and says I, 'Beg your pardon,
Mr. Longfellow, if you'll be so kind as to hold your
yawp for about five minutes and let me get this
grub ready, you'll do me proud.' Well, sir, after
they'd filled up I set out the jug. Mr. Holmes
looks at it, and then he fires up all of a sudden and
yells:

"'Flash out a stream of blood-red wine!
For I would drink to other days.'

"By George, I was getting kind of worked up.
I don't deny it, I was getting kind of worked up.
I turns to Mr. Holmes, and says I, 'Looky here,
my fat friend, I'm a-running this shanty, and if the
court knows herself, you'll take whiskey straight
or you'll go dry.' Them's the very words I said
to him. Now I don't want to sass such famous
littery people, but you see they kind of forced me.
There ain't nothing onreasonable 'bout me; I
don't mind a passel of guests a-treadin' on my
tail three or four times, but when it comes to
standing on it it's different, 'and if the court
knows herself,' I says, 'you'll take whiskey straight
or you'll go dry.' Well, between drinks they'd
swell around the cabin and strike attitudes and

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THE STORY OF A SPEECH

spout; and pretty soon they got out a greasy old
deck and went to playing euchre at ten cents a
corner — on trust. I began to notice some pretty
suspicious things. Mr. Emerson dealt, looked at
his hand, shook his head, says :

"'I am the doubter and the doubt — '

and ca'mly bunched the hands and went to
shuffling for a new layout. Says he:

"'They reckon ill who leave me out;
They know not well the subtle ways I keep.
I pass and deal again T

Hang'd if he didn't go ahead and do it, too! Oh,
he was a cool one ! Well, in about a minute things
were running pretty tight, but all of a sudden I
see by Mr. Emerson's eye he judged he had 'em.
He had already corralled two tricks, and each of
the others one. So now he kind of lifts a little in
his chair and says:

"'I tire of globes and aces! —
Too long the game is played!'

— and down he fetched a right bower. Mr. Long-
fellow smiles as sweet as pie and says:

•'"Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
For the lesson thou hast taught/

— and blamed if he didn't down with another right
bower! Emerson claps his hand on his bowie,
2 5

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

Longfellow claps his on his revolver, and I went
under a bunk. There was going to be trouble;
but that monstrous Holmes rose up, wobbling his
double chins, and says he, ' Order, gentlemen;
the first man that draws, I'll lay down on him and
smother him P All quiet on the Potomac, ypu bet !
"They were pretty how-come-you-so by now,
and they begun to blow. Emerson says, 'Thie
nobbiest thing I ever wrote was " Barbara Friet-
chie." ' Says Longfellow, 'It don't begin with my
" Biglow Papers." ' Says Holmes, ' My " Thana-
topsis " lays over 'em both.' They mighty near
ended in a fight. Then they wished they had
some more company — and Mr. Emerson pointed
to me and says:

" 'Is yonder squalid peasant all

That this proud nursery could breed?'

He was a-whetting his bowie on his boot — so I let
it pass. Well, sir, next they took it into their
heads that they would like some music ; so they
made me stand up and sing " When Johnny
Comes Marching Home " till I dropped — at thir-
teen minutes past four this morning. That's what
I've been through, my friend. When I woke at
seven, they were leaving, thank goodness, and Mr.
Longfellow had my only boots on, and his'n under
his arm. Says I, 'Hold on, there, Evangeline,
what are you going to do with them?' He says,
'Going to make tracks with 'em; because:

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THE STORY OF A SPEECH

"'Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime;
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.'

As I said, Mr. Twain, you are the fourth in twenty-
four hours — and I'm going to move; I ain't suited
to a littery atmosphere."

I said to the miner, "Why, my dear sir, these
were not the gracious singers to whom we and
the world pay loving reverence and homage; these
were impostors."

The miner investigated me with a calm eye for
a while ; then said he, "Ah ! impostors, were they ?
Are you?"

I did not pursue the subject, and since then I
have not travelled on my nom de guerre enough
to hurt. Such was the reminiscence I was moved
to contribute, Mr. Chairman. In my enthusiasm
I may have exaggerated the details a little, but
you will easily forgive me that fault, since I be-
lieve it is the first time I have ever deflected from
perpendicular fact on an occasion like this.

From Mark Twain's Autobiography.

January n, 1906.
Answer to a letter received this morning:

Dear Mrs. H., — t am forever your debtor for re-
minding hie of that curious passage in my life. Dur-
ing the first year or two after it hapjtehed, I could

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not bear to think of it. My pain and shame were so
intense, and my sense of having been an imbecile so
settled, established and confirmed, that I drove the
episode entirely from my mind — and so all these
twenty-eight or twenty-nine years I have lived in
the conviction that my performance of that time
was coarse, vulgar, and destitute of humor. But your
suggestion that you and your family found humor in
it twenty-eight years ago moved me to look into the
matter. So I commissioned a Boston typewriter to
delve among the Boston papers of that bygone time
and send me a copy of it.

It came this morning, and if there is any vulgarity
about it I am not able to discover it. If it isn't
innocently and ridiculously funny, I am no judge. I
will see to it that you get a copy.

What I have said to Mrs. H. is true. I did
suffer during a year or two from the deep humili-
ations of that episode. But at last, in 1888, in
Venice, my wife and I came across Mr. and Mrs.
A. P. C, of Concord, Massachusetts, and a friend-
ship began then of the sort which nothing but
death terminates. The C.'s were very bright
people and in every way charming and compan-
ionable We were together a month or two in
Venice and several months in Rome, afterward,
and one day that lamented break of mine was
mentioned. And when I was on the point of
lathering those people for bringing it to my mind
when I had gotten the memory of it almost
squelched, I perceived with joy that the C.'s were

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THE STORY OF A SPEECH

indignant about the way that my performance
had been received in Boston. They poured out
their opinions most freely and frankly about the
frosty attitude of the people who were present
at that performance, and about the Boston news-
papers for the position they had taken in regard
to the matter. That position was that I had
been irreverent beyond belief, beyond imagina-
tion. Very well; I had accepted that as a fact
for a year or two, and had been thoroughly miser-
able about it whenever I thought of it — which
was not frequently, if I could help it. Whenever
I thought of it I wondered how I ever could have
been inspired to do so unholy a thing. Well, the
C.'s comforted me, but they did not persuade me
to continue to think about the unhappy episode. .
I resisted that. I tried to get it out of my mind,
and let it die, and I succeeded. Until Mrs. H.'s
letter came, it had been a good twenty-five years
since I had thought of that matter; and when
she said that the thing was funny I wondered if
possibly she might be right. At any rate, my
curiosity was aroused, and I wrote to Boston and
got the whole thing copied, as above set fo0i.

I vaguely remember some of the details of that
gatherings— dimly I can see a hundred people —
no, perhaps fifty — shadowy figures sitting at
tables feeding, ghosts now to me, and nameless
forevermore. I don't know who they were, but
I can very distinctly see, seated at the grand table

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

and facing the rest of us, Mr. Emerson, super-
naturally grave, unsmiling; Mr. Whittier, grave,
lovely, his beautiful spirit shining out of his face ;
Mr. Longfellow, with his silken white hair and his
benignant face; Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, flash-
ing smiles and affection and all good-fellowship
everywhere like a rose-diamond whose facets are
being turned toward the light first one way and
then another— a charming man, and always fas-
cinating, whether he was talking or whether he
was sitting still (what he would call still, but
what would be jnore or less motion to other peo-
ple). I can see those figures with entire distinct-
ness across this abyss of time.

One other feature is clear — Willie Winter (for
these past thousand years dramatic editor of the
New York Tribune, and still occupying that high
post in his old age) was there. He was much
younger then than he is now, and he showed it.
It was always a pleasure to me to see Willie Winter
at a banquet. During a matter of twenty years
I was seldom at a banquet where Willie Winter
was not also present, and where he did not read
a chaflbing poem written for the occasion. He
did it this time, and it was up to standard : dainty,
happy, choicely phrased, and as good to listen to
as music, and sounding exactly as if it was pour-
ing unprepared out of heart and brain.

Now at that point ends all that was pleasurable
about that notable celebration of Mr. Whittier's

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seventieth birthday — because I got up at that
point and followed Winter, with what I have no
dotlbt I supposed would be the gem of the even-
ing — the gay oration above quoted from the Bos-
ton £aper. I had written it all out the day before
and had perfectly memorized it, and I stood tip
there at my genial and happy and self-satisfied
ease, and began to deliver it. Those majestic
guests, that row of venerable and still active vol-
canoes, listened, as did everybody else in the
house, with attentive interest. Well, I delivered
myself of — we'll say the first two hundred words
of my speech. I was expecting no returns from
that part of the speech, but this was not the case
as regained the rest of it. I arrived now at the
dialogue: "The old miner said, 'You are the
fourth, I'm going to move.' 'The fourth what?'
said I. He answered, 'The fourth littery man
that Has been here in twenty-four hours. I am
going to move.' 'Why, you don't tell me,' said
I. 'Who were the others?' 'Mr. Longfellow, Mr.
Emerson, Mr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, consound
the lot—' "

Now, then, the house's attention contintfcl, but
the expression of interest in the faces turned to a
sort of black frost. I wondered what the trouble
Was. 1 didn't know. I went on, but with dif-
ficulty— I struggled along, and entered upon that
miner's fearful description of the b6gus Emerson,
thfe bdgus Hdmes, the bogus Longfellow, always

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hoping — but with a gradually perishing hope —
that somebody would laugh, or that somebody
would at least smile, but nobody did. I didn't
know enough to give it up and sit down, I was
too new to public speaking, and so I went on
with this awful performance, and carried it clear
through to the end, in front of a body of people
who seemed turned to stone with horror. It was
the sort of expression their faces would have worn
if I had been makmg^fchese remarks about the
Deity ancTThe rest of the T rinity; there is no
milder way in which to describe the petrified
condition and the ghastly expression of those
people.

When I sat down it was with a heart which
had long ceased to beat. I shall never be as
dead again as I was then. I shall never be as
miserable again as I was then. I speak now as
one who doesn't know what the condition of
things may be in the next world, but in this one I
shall never be as wretched again as I was then.
Howells, who was near me, tried to say a com-
forting word, but couldn't get beyond a gasp.
Theresas no use — he understood the whole size
of the disaster. He had good intentions, but the
words froze before they could get out. It was
an atmosphere that would freeze anything. If
Benvenuto Cellini's salamander had been in that
place he would not have survived to be put into
Cellini's autobiography. There was a frightful

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THE STORY OF A SPEECH

pause. There was an awful silence, a desolating
silence. Then the next man on the list had to
get up — there was no help for it. That was
Bishop — Bishop had just burst handsomely upon
the world with a most acceptable novel, which
had appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, a place
which would make any novel respectable and any
author noteworthy. In this case the novel itself
was recognized as being, without extraneous help,
respectable. Bishop was away up in the public
favor, and he was an object of high interest, con-
sequently there was a sort of national expectancy
in the air; we may say our American millions
were standing, from Maine to Texas and from
Alaska to Florida, holding their breath, their lips
parted, their hands ready to applaud, when Bishop
should get up on that occasion, and for the first
time in his life speak in public. It was under
these damaging conditions that he got up to
"make good," as the vulgar say. I had spoken
several times before, and that is the reason why
I was able to go on without dying in my tracks,
as I ought to have done — but Bishop had had no
experience. He was up facing those awful deities
— facing those other people, those strangers —
facing human beings for the first time in his life,
with a speech to utter. No doubt it was well
packed away in his memory, no doubt it was
fresh and usable, until I had been heard from.
I suppose that after that, and under the smother-

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ing pall of that dreary silence, it began to waste
away and disappear out of his head like the rags
breaking from the edge of a fog, and presently
there wasn't any fog left. He didn't go on — he
didn't last loiig. It was not many sentences
after, his first before he began to hesitate, and
break, and ldse his grip, and totter, and wobble,
and at last he slumped down in d limp tod mushy
pile.

Well, the programme for the occasion was prob-
ably hot more than one -third finished, but it
ended there. Nobody rose. The next man
hadn't strength enough to get up, and everybody
looked so dazed, so stupefied, paralyzed, it was
impossible for anybody to do anything, or even
try. Nothing could go on in that strange atmos-
phere. Ho wells mournfully, and without words,
hitched himself to Bishop and me and supported
us out of the room. It was very kind — he was
most generous. He towed us tottering away
into some room in that building, and we sat
down there. I don't know what my remark was
now, but I know the nature of it. It was the kind
of remark you make when you know that nothing
in the world can help your case. But Howells
was honest — he had to say the heart-breaking
things he did say: that thete was no help for this
calamity, this shipwreck, this cataclysm; that
this was thfe most disastrous thing that had ever
happened in anybody's history — arid then he

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THE STQRY OF A SPEECH

added, 'That is, for you — and consider what you
have done for Bishop. It is bad enough in your
case, you deserve to suffer. You have committed
this crime, and you deserve to have all you are
going to get. But here is an innocent man.
Bishop had never done you any hanrj, and see
what you have done to him. ' He can never hold
his head up again. The world can never look upoji
Bishop as being a live person. He is a corpse."

That is the history of that episode of twenty-
eight years ago, which pretty nearly killed me
with shame during that first year or two when-
ever it forced its way into my mind.

Now then, I take that speech up and examine
it. As I said, it arrived this morning, from Bos-
ton. I have read it twice, and unless I am an
idiot, it hasn't a single defect in it from the first
word to the last. It is just as good as good can
be. It is smart; it is saturated with humor.
There isn't a suggestion of coarseness or vulgarity
in it anywhere. What could have been the mat-
ter with that house? It is amazing, it is in-
credible, that they didn't shout with laughter,
and those deities the loudest of them all. Could
the fault have been with me ? Did I lose courage
when I saw those great men up there whom I
was going to describe in such a strange fashion?
If that happened, if I showed doubt, that can
account for it, for you can't be successfully funny

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

if you show that you are afraid of it. Well, I
can't account for it, but if I had those beloved
and revered old literary immortals back here now
on the platform at Carnegie Hall I would take
that same old speech, deliver it, word for word,
and melt them till they'd run all over that stage.
Oh, the fault must have been with me, it is not in
the speech at all.

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PLYMOUTH ROCK AND THE PILGRIMS

Address at the First Annual Dinner, N. E So-
ciety, Philadelphia, December 22, 1881

On calling upon Mr. Clemens to make response,
President Rollins said:

" This sentiment has been assigned to one who was
never exactly born in New England, nor, perhaps, were
any of his ancestors. He is not technically, therefore,
of New England descent. Under the painful circum-
stances in which he has found himself, however, he
has done the best he could — he has had all his children
born there, and has made of himself a New England
ancestor. He is a self-made man. More than this, and
better even, in cheerful, hopeful, helpful literature he
is of New England ascent. To ascend there in any-
thing that's reasonable is difficult, for — confidentially,
with the door shut — we all know that they are the
brightest, ablest sons of that goodly land who never
leave it, and it is among and above them that Mr.
Twain has made his brilliant and permanent ascent —
become a man of mark."

I RISE to protest. I have kept still for years,
but really I think there is no sufficient justi-
fication for this sort of thing. What do you want
to celebrate those people for ? — those ancestors of

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yours of 1620 — the Mayflower tribe, I mean.
What do you want to celebrate them for? Your
pardon : the gentleman at my left assures me that
you are not celebrating the Pilgrims themselves,
but the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth
Rock on the 2 2d of December. So you are cele-
brating their landing. Why, the other pretext
was thin enough, but this is thinner than ever;
the other was tissue, tinfoil, fish-bladder, but this
is gold-leaf. Celebrating their landing! What
was there remarkable about it, I would like to
know? What can you be thinking of? Why,
those Pilgrims had been at sea three or four
months. It was the very middle of winter: it
was as cold as death off Cape Cod there. Why
shouldn't they come ashore? If they hadn't
landed there would be some reason for celebrating
the fact. It would have been a case of monu-
mental leatherheadedness which the world would
not willingly let die. If it had been you, gentle-
men, you probably wouldn't have landed, but
you have no shadow of right to be celebrating,
in your ancestors, gifts which they did not exer-
cise, but only transmitted. Why, to be cele-
brating the mere landing of the Pilgrims — to be
trying to make out that this most natural and
simple and customary procedure was an extra-
ordinary circumstance — a circumstance to be
amazed at, and admired, aggrandized and glori-
fied, at orgies like this for two hundred and sixty

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PLYMOUTH ROCK AND THE PILGRIMS

years — hang it, a horse would have known enough
to land; a horse — Pardon again; the gentleman
on my right assures me that it was not merely
the landing of the Pilgrims that we are celebrat-
ing, but the Pilgrims themselves. So we have
struck an inconsistency here — one says it was the
landing, the other says it was the Pilgrims. It
is an inconsistency characteristic of your intract-
able and disputatious tribe, for you never agree
about anything but Boston. Well, then, what do
you want to celebrate those Pilgrims for?» They
were a mighty hard lot — you know it. I grant
you, without the slightest unwillingness, that they
were a deal more gentle and merciful and just than
were the people of Europe of that day; I grant you
that they are better than their predecessors. But
what of that? — that is nothing. People always
progress. You are better than your fathers and
grandfathers were (this is the first time I have
ever aimed a measureless slander at the departed,
for I consider such things improper). Yes, those
among you who have not been in the penitentiary,
if such there be, are better than your fathers and
grandfathers were ; but is that any sufficient reason
for getting up annual dinners and celebrating you ?
No, by no means — by no means. Well, I repeat,
those Pilgrims were a hard lot. They took good
care of themselves, but they abolished everybody
else's ancestors. I am a border-ruffian from the
State of Missouri. I am a Connecticut Yankee

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by adoption. In me, you have Missouri morals,
Connecticut culture; this, gentlemen, is the com-
bination which makes the perfect man. But
where are my ancestors? Whom shall I cele-
brate ? Where shall I find the raw material ?

My first American ancestor, gentlemen, was
an Indian — an early Indian. Your ancestors
skinned him alive, and I am an orphan. Not one
drop of my blood flows in that Indian's veins to-
day. I stand here, lone and forlorn, without an
ancestor. They skinned him! I do not object
to that, if they needed his fur; but alive, gentle-
men — alive! They skinned him alive — and before
company! That is what rankles. Think how he
must have felt ; for he was a sensitive person
and easily embarrassed. If he had been a bird,
it would have been all right, and no violence
done to his feelings, because he would have been
considered " dressed." But he was not a bird,
gentlemen, he was a man, and probably one of
the most undressed men that ever was. I ask
you to put yourselves in his place. I ask it as a
favor; I ask it as a tardy act of justice; I ask it
in the interest of fidelity to the traditions of your
ancestors; I ask it that the world may contem-
plate, with vision unobstructed by disguising
swallow-tails and white cravats, the spectacle
which the true New England Society ought to
present. Cease to come to these annual orgies
in this hollow modern mockery — the surplusage

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PLYMOUTH ROCK AND THE PILGRIMS

of raiment. Come in character; come in the sum-
mer grace, come in the unadorned simplicity,
come in the free and joyous costume which your
sainted ancestors provided for mine.

Later ancestors of mine were the Quakers Will-
iam Robinson, Marmaduke Stevenson, et al. Your
tribe chased them out of the country for their
religion's sake; promised them death if they came
back; for your ancestors had forsaken the homes
they loved, and braved the perils of the sea, the
implacable climate, and the savage wilderness,
to acquire that highest and most precious of
boons, freedom for every man on this broad
continent to worship according to the dictates
of his own conscience — and they were not going
to allow a lot of pestiferous Quakers to interfere
with it. Your ancestors broke forever the chains
of political slavery, and gave the vote to every
man in this wide land, excluding none! — none
except those who did not belong to the orthodox
church. Your ancestors — yes, they were a hard*
lot; but, nevertheless, they gave us religious lib-
erty to worship as they required us to worship,
and political liberty to vote as the church re-
quired; and so I the bereft one, I the forlorn one,
am here to do my best to help you celebrate them
rights

The Quaker woman Elizabeth Hooton was an
ancestress of mine. Your people were pretty
severe with her — you will confess that. But,

3 21

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poor thing! I believe they changed her opinions
before she died, and took her into their fold; and
so we have every reason to presume that when
she died she went to the same place which your
ancestors went to. It is a great pity, for she was
a good woman. Roger Williams was an ancestor
of mine. I don't really remember what your
people did with him. But they banished him to
Rhode Island, anyway. And then, I believe,
recognizing that this was really carrying harsh-
ness to»an unjustifiable extreme, they took pity
on him and burned him. They were a hard lot!
All those Salem witches were ancestors of mine!
Your people made it tropical for them. Yes,
they did; by pressure and the gallows they made
such a clean deal with them that there hasn't
been a witch and hardly a halter in our family
from that day to this, and that is one hundred
and eighty-nine years. The first slave brought
into New England out of Africa by your progeni-
tors was an ancestor of mine — for I am of a mixed
breed, an infinitely shaded and exquisite Mon-
grel. I'm not one of your sham meerschaums
that you can color in a week. No, my complexion
is the patient art of eight generations. Well, in
my own time, I had acquired a lot of my kin —
by purchase, and swapping around, and one way
and another — and was getting along very well.
Then, with the inborn perversity of your lineage,
you got up a war, and took them all away from

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PLYMOUTH ROCK AND THE PILGRIMS

me. And so, again am I bereft, again am I for-
lorn; no drop of my blood flows in the veins of
any living being who is marketable.

O my friends, hear me and reform! I seek
your good, not mine. You have heard the speeches.
Disband these New England societies — nurseries
of a system of steadily augmenting laudation and
hosannaing, which, if persisted in uncurbed, ifaay
some day in the remote future beguile you into
prevaricating and bragging. Oh, stop, stop,
while you are still temperate in your appreciation
of your ancestors! Hear me, I beseech you; get
up an auction and sell Plymouth Rock! The Pil-
grims were a simple and ignorant race. They
never had seen any good rocks before, or at least
any that were not watched, and so they were ex*
cusable for hopping ashore in frantic delight and
clapping an iron fence around this one. But you,
gentlemen, are educated; you are enlightened}
you know that in the rich land of your nativity,
opulent New England, overflowing with rocks,
this one isn't worth, at the outside, more than
thirty-five cents. Therefore, sell it, before it is
injured by exposure, or at least throw it open to
the patent-medicine advertisements, and let it
earn its taxes.

Yes, hear your true friend — your only true
friend — list to his voice. Disband these societies,
hotbeds of vice, of moral decay — perpetuatorg of
ancestral superstition. , Here on this board I see

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

water, I see milk, I see the wild and deadly lemon-
ade. These are but steps upon the downward
path. Next we shall see tea, then chocolate, then
coffee — hotel coffee. A few more years — all too
few, I fear— mark my words, we shall have cider!
Gentlemen, pause ere it be too late. You are on
the broad road which leads to dissipation, phys-
ical ruin, moral decay, gory crime and the gal-
lows! I beseech you, I implore you, in the name
of your anxious friends, in the name of your suf-
fering families, in the name of your impending
widows and orphans, stop ere it be too late. Dis-
band these New England societies, renounce these
soul-blistering saturnalia, cease from varnishing
the rusty reputations of your long-vanished an-
cestors — the super-high-moral old iron-clads of
Cape Cod, the pious buccaneers of Plymouth
ftock — go home, and try to learn-to behave!

However, chaff and nonsense aside, I think I
honor and appreciate your Pilgrim stock as much
as you do yourselves, perhaps ; and I endorse and
adopt a sentiment uttered by a grandfather of
mine once — a man of sturdy opinions, of sincere
make of mind, and not given to flattery. He
said: " People may talk as they like about that
Pilgrim stock, but, after all's said and done, it
would be pretty hard to improve on those people;
and, as for me, I don't mind coming out flatfooted
and saying there ain't any way to improve on
them — except having them born in Missouri !"

M /

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COMPLIMENTS AND DEGREES

Delivered at the Lotos Club, January ii, 1908

In introducing Mr. Clemens, Frank R. Lawrence,
the President of the Lotos Club, recalled the fact that
the first club dinner in the present club-house, some
fourteen years ago, was in honor of Mark Twain.

I WISH to begin this time at the beginning, lest
I forget it altogether; that is to say, I wish to
thank you for this welcome that you are giving,
and the welcome which you gave me seven years
ago, and which I forgot to thank you for at that
time. I also wish to thank you for the welcome
you gave me fourteen years ago, which I also for-
got to thank you for at the time.

I hope you will continue this custom to give me
a dinner every seven years before I join the hosts
in the other world — I do not know which world.

Mr. Lawrence and Mr. Porter have paid me
many compliments. It is very difficult to take
compliments. I do not care whether you deserve
the compliments or not, it is just as difficult to
take them. The other night I was at the En-
gineers' Club, and enjoyed the sufferings of Mr.

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

Carnegie. They were complimenting him there;
there it was all compliments, and none of them
deserved. They say that you cannot live by
bread alone, but I can live on compliments. .:

I do not make any pretence that I dislike com-
pliments. The stronger the better, and I can
manage to digest them. I think I have lost so
much by not making a collection of compliments,
to put them away and take them out again once
in a while. When in England I said that I would
start to collect compliments, and I began there
and I have brought some of them along.

The first one of these lies — I wrote them down
and preserved them — I think they are mighty good
and extremely just. It is one of Hamilton Mabie's
compliments. He said that La Salle was the first
One to make a voyage of the Mississippi, but Mark
Twain was the first to chart, light, and navigate
it for the whole world.

If that had been published at the time that I
issued that book [Life on the Mississippi], it would
have been money in my pocket. I tell you, it
is a talent by itself to pay compliments gracefully
and have them ring true. It's an art by itself.

Here is another compliment by Albert Bigelow
Paine, my biographer. He is writing four octavo
volumes about me, and he has been at my elbow
two and one-half years.

I just suppose that he does not know me, but
says he knows me. He says "Mark Twain is not

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COMPLIMENTS AND DEGREES

merely a great writer, a great philosopher, a great
man; he is the supreme expression of the human
being, with his strength and his weakness. ' ' What
a talent for compression! It takes a genius in
compression to compact as many facts as that.

W. D. Howells spoke of me as first of Hartford,
and ultimately of the solar system, not to say of
the universe.

You know how modest Howells is. If it can
be proved that my fame reaches to Neptune and
Saturn, that will satisfy even me. You know how
modest and retiring Howells seems to be, but deep
down he is as vain as I am.

Mr. Howells had been granted a degree at Ox-
ford, whose gown was red. He had been invited
to an exercise at Columbia, and upon inquiry had
been told that it was usual to wear the black gown.
Later he had found that three other men wore
bright gowns, and he had lamented that he had
been one of the blafck mass, and not a red torch.

Edison wrote: "The average American loves
his family. If he has any love left over for some
other person, he generally selects Mark Twain.' *

Now here's the compliment of a little Montana
girl which came to me indirectly. She was in a
room in which there was a large photograph of
me. After gazing at it steadily for a time, she
said:

' 'We've got a John the Baptist like that." She
also said: "Only ours has more trimmings."

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I suppose she meant the halo. Now here is a
gold-miner's compliment. It is forty-two years
old. It was my introduction to an audience to
which I lectured in a log school-house. There
were no ladies there. I wasn't famous then.
They didn't know me. Only the miners were
there, with their breeches tucked into their boot-
tops and with clay all over them. They wanted
some one to introduce me, and they selected a
miner, who protested, saying:

"I don't know anything about this man. Any-
how, I only know two things about him. One is,
he has never been in jail, and the other is, I don't
know why."

There's one thing I want to say about that
English trip. I knew his Majesty the King of
England long years ago, and I didn't meet him
for the first time then. One thing that I regret
was that some newspapers said I talked with the
Queen of England with my hat on. I don't do
that with any woman. I did not put it on until
she asked me to. Then she told me to put it on,
and it's a command there. I thought I had car-
ried my American democracy far enough. So I
put it on. I have no use for a hat, and never did
have.

Who was it who said that the police of London
knew me ? Why, the police know me everywhere.
There never was a day over there when a police-
man did not salute me, and then put up his hand

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COMPLIMENTS AND DEGREES

and stop the traffic of the world. They treated
me as though I were a duchess.

The happiest experience I had in England was
at a dinner given in the building of the Punch
publication, a humorous paper which is appre-
ciated by all Englishmen. It was the greatest
privilege ever allowed a foreigner. I entered the
dining-room of the building, where those men get
together who have been running the paper for
over fifty years. We were about to begin dinner
when the toastmaster said: "Just a minute; there
ought to be a little ceremony/' Then there was
that meditating silence for a while, and out of a
closet there came a beautiful little girl dressed in
pink, holding in her hand a copy of the previous
week's paper, which had in it my cartoon. It
broke me all up. I could not even say "Thank
you." That was the prettiest incident of the
dinner, the delight of all that wonderful table.
When she was about to go, I said, "My child, you
are not going to leave me; I have hardly got
acquainted with you." She replied, "You know
I've got to go; they never let me come in here
before, and they never will again." That is one
of the beautiful incidents that I cherish.

[At the conclusion of his speech, and while the
diners were still cheering him, Colonel Porter
brought forward the red-and-gray gown of the
Oxford "doctor," and Mr. Clemens was made to

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

don it. The diners rose to their feet in their en-
thusiasm. With the mortar-board on his head,
and looking down admiringly at himself, Mr.
Twain said:]

I Hke that gown. I always did like red. The
redder it is the better I Hke it. I was born for a
savage. Now, whoever saw any red Hke this?
There is no red outside the arteries of anarch-
arigel that cduld compare with this. I know you
all envy me. I am going to have luncheon shortly
with ladies — just ladies. I will be the only lady of
my sex present, and I shall put on this gown and
make those ladies look dim.

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BOOKS, AUTHORS, AND HATS

Address at the Pilgrims' Club Luncheon, Given

in Honor of Mr. Clemens at the Savoy

Hotel, London, June 25, 1907.

Mr. Birrell, M.P., Chief-Secretary for Ireland, in
introducing Mr. Clemens said: "We all love Mark
Twain, and we are here to tell him so. One more point
— all the world knows it, and that is why it is danger-
pus to omit it — our guest is a distinguished citizen of
the Great Republic beyond the seas. In America his
Huckleberry Finn and his Tom Sawyer are what
Robinson Crusoe and Tom Brown's School Days have
been to us. They are racy of the soil. They are
books to which it is impossible to place any period of
termination. I will not speak of the classics —
reminiscences of much evil in our early lives. We
do not meet here to-day as critics with our apprecia-
tions and depreciations, our twopenny little prefaces
or our forewords. I am not going to say what the
world a thousand years hence will think of Mark
Twain. Posterity will take care of itself, will read
what it wants to read, will forget what it chooses to
forget, and will pay no attention whatsoever to our
critical mumblings and jumblings. Let us therefore
be content to say to our friend and guest that we are
here speaking for ourselves and for our children, to
say what he has been to us. I remember in Liver-

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pool, in 1867, first buying the copy, which I still pre-
serve, of the celebrated Jumping Frog. It had a few
words of preface which reminded me then that our
guest in those days was called ' the wild humorist of
the Pacific slope/ and a few lines later down, 'the
moralist of the Main.' That was some forty years
ago. Here he is, still the humorist, still the moralist.
His humor enlivens and enlightens his morality, and
his morality is all the better for his humor. That is
one of the reasons why we love him. I am not here
to mention any book of his — that is a subject of dis-
pute in my family circle, which is the best and which
is the next best — but I must put in a word, lest I
should not be true to myself — a terrible thing — for
his Joan of Arc, a book of chivalry, of nobility, and
of manly sincerity for which I take this opportunity
of thanking him. But you can all drink this toast,
each one of you with his own intention. You can
get into it what meaning you like. Mark Twain is a
man whom English and Americans do well to honor.
He is the true consolidator of nations. His delight-
ful humor is of the kind which dissipates and destroys
national prejudices. His truth and his honor, his
love of truth, and his love of honor, overflow all
boundaries. He has made the world better by his
presence. We rejoice to see him here. Long may
he live to reap the plentiful harvest of hearty, honest
human affection !"

PILGRIMS, I desire first to thank those un-
dergraduates of Oxford. When a man has
grown so old as I am, when he has reached the

L verge of seventy-two years, there is nothing that
carries him back to/ihe dreamland of his life, to
^ 32

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his boyhood, like recognition of those young
hearts up yonder. And so I thank them out of
my heart. I desire to thank the Pilgrims of
New York also for their kind notice and message
which they have cabled over here. Mr. Birrell
says he does not know how he got here. - * But* he
will be able to get away all right — he has not
drunk anything since he came here. I am glad
to know about those friends of his, Otway and
Chatterton — fresh, new names to me. I am glad
of the disposition he has shown to rescue them
from the evils of poverty, and if they are still in
London, I hope to have a talk with them. For a
while I thought he was going to tell us the effect
which my book had upon his growing manhood.
I thought he was going to tell us how much that
effect amounted to, and whether it really made
him what he now is, but with the discretion born
of Parliamentary experience he dodged that, and
we do not know now whether he read the book or
not. He did that very neatly. I could not do it
any better myself.

My books have had effects, and very good ones,
too, here and there, and some others not so good.
There is no doubt about that. But I remember
one monumental instance of it years and years
ago. Professor Norton, of Harvard, was over
here, and when he came back to Boston I went
out with Howells to call on him. Norton was
allied in some way by marriage with Darwin.

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Mr. Norton was very gentle in what he had to say,
and almost delicate, and he said: "Mr. Clemens;
I have been spending some time with Mr. Darwin
in England, and I should like to tell you something
connected with that visit. You were the object
of it, and I myself would have been very proud of
it, but you may not be proud of it. At any rate,
I am going to tell you what it was, and to leave
to you to regard it as you please. Mr. Darwin
took me up to his bedroom and pointed out cer-
tain things there — pitcher-plants, and so on, that
he was measuring and watching f torn day to day —
and he said: 'The chambermaid is permitted to
do what she pleases in this room, but she must
never touch those plants and nfever touch those
books on that table by that candle. With those
books I read myself to sleep every night.' Those
were your own books." I said: "There is no
question to my mind as to whether I should regard
that as a compliment or not. I do regard it as a
very great compliment and a very high honor
that that great mind, laboring for the whole hu-
man race, should rest itself on my books. I am
proud that he should read himself to sleep with
them."

Now, I could not keep that to myself — I was so
proud of it. As soon as I got home to Hartford
I called up my oldest friend — and dearest enemy
on occasion — the Rev. Joseph Twichell, my pas-
tor, and I told him about that, and, of cdurse,

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he was full of interest and venom. Those people
who get no compliments like that feel lil^e that.
He went off. He did not issue any applause of
any kind, and I did not hear of that subject for
some time. But when Mr. Darwin passed away
from this life, and some time after Darwin's Life
and Letters came out, the Rev. Mr. Twichell pro-
cured an early copy of that work and found some-
thing in it which he considered applied to me.
He came over to my house — it was snowing, rain-
ing, sleeting, but that did not make any difference
to Twichell. He produced the book, and turned
over and over, until he came to a certain place,
when he said: "Here, look at this letter from
Mr. Darwin to Sir Joseph Hooker." What Mr.
Darwin said — I give you the idea and not the very
words — was this : I do not know whether I ought
to have devoted my whole life to these drudgeries
in natural history and the other sciences or not,
for while I may have gained in one way I have
lost in another. Once I had a fine perception and
appreciation of high literature, but in me that
quality is atrophied. "That was the reason/'
said Mr. Twichell, "he was reading your books."
Mr. Birrell has touched lightly — very lightly,
but in not an uncomplimentary way — on my posi-
tion in this world as a moralist. I am glad to have
that recognition, too, because I have suffered since
I have been in this town; in the first place, right
away, when I came here, from a newsman going

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around with a great red, highly displayed placard
in the place of an apron. He was selling news-
papers, and there were two sentences on that
placard which would have been all right if they
had been punctuated; but they ran those two
sentences together without a comma or anything,
and that would naturally create a wrong impres-
sion, because it said, "Mark Twain arrives Ascot
Cup stolen." No doubt many a person was mis-
led by those sentences joined together in that un-
kind way. I have no doubt my character has
suffered from it. I suppose I ought to defend
my character, but how can I defend it? I can
say here and now — and anybody can see by my
face that I am sincere, that I speak the truth —
that I have never seen that Cup. I have not got
the Cup — I did not have a chance to get it. I
have always had a good character in that way.
I have hardly ever stolen anything, and if I did
steal anything I had discretion enough to know
about the value of it first. I do not steal things
that are likely to get myself into trouble. I do
not think any of us do that. I know we all take
things — that is to be expected — but really, I have
never taken anything, certainly in England, that
amounts to any great thing. I do confess that
when I was here seven years ago I stole a hat,
but that did not amount to anything. It was
not a good hat, and was only a clergyman's hat,
anyway.

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BOOKS, AUTHORS, AND HATS

I was at a luncheon party, and Archdeacon
Wilberforce was there also. I dare say he is
Archdeacon now — he was a canon then — and he
was serving in the Westminster battery, if that is
the proper term — I do not know, as you mix
military and ecclesiastical things together so much.
He left the luncheon table before I did. He be-
gan this. I did steal his hat, but he began by
taking mine. I make that interjection because I
would not accuse Archdeacon Wilberforce of steal-
ing my hat — I should not think of it. I confine
that phrase to myself. He merely took my hat.
And with good judgment, too — it was a better hat
than his. He came out before the luncheon was
over, and sorted the hats in the hall, and selected
one which suited. It happened to be mine. He
went off with it. When I came out by-and-by
there was no hat there which would go on my
head except his, which was left behind. My head
was not the customary size just at that time. I
had been receiving a good many very nice and
complimentary attentions, and my head was a
couple of sizes larger than usual, and his hat just
suited me. The bumps and corners were all right
intellectually. There were results pleasing to me
— possibly so to him. He found out whose hat it
was, and wrote me saying it was pleasant that all
the way home, whenever he met anybody his
gravities, his solemnities, his deep thoughts, his
eloquent remarks were all snatched up by the

4 37

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people he met, and mistaken for brilliant humor-
isms.

I had another experience. It was not un-
pleasing. I was received with a deference which
was entirely foreign to my experience by every-
body whom I met, so that before I got home I
had a much higher opinion of myself than I have
ever had before or since. And there is in that
very connection an incident which I remember
at that old date which is rather melancholy to me,
because it shows how a person can deteriorate in
a mere seven years. It is seven years ago, I
have not that hat now. I was going down Pall-
Mail, or some other of your big streets, and I
recognized that that hat needed ironing. I went
into a big shop and passed in my hat, and asked
that it might be ironed. They were courteous,
very courteous, even courtly. They brought that
hat back to me presently very sleek and nice, and
I asked how much there was to pay. They re-
plied that they did not charge the clergy any-
thing. I have cherished the delight of that mo-
ment from that day to this. It was the first
thing I did the other day to go and hunt up that
shop and hand in my hat to have it ironed. I
said when it came back, "How much to pay?"
They said, "Ninepence." In seven years I have
acquired all that worldliness, and I am sorry to
be back where I was seven years ago.

But now I am chaffing and chaffing and chaffing
38

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BOOKS, AUTHORS, AND HATS

here, and I hope you will forgive me for that; but
when a man stands on the verge of seventy-two
you know perfectly well that he never reached
that place without knowing what this life is —
heartbreaking bereavement. And so our rever-
ence is for our dead. We do not forget them;
but our duty is toward the living; and if we can
be cheerful, cheerful in spirit, cheerful in speech
and in hope, that is a benefit to those who are
around us.

My own history includes an incident which
will always connect me with England in a
pathetic way, for when I arrived here seven
years ago with my wife and my daughter — we
had gone around the globe lecturing to raise
money to clear off a debt — my wife and one of
my daughters started across the ocean to bring
to England our eldest daughter. She was twenty-
four years of age and in the bloom of young
womanhood, and we were unsuspecting. When
my wife and daughter — and my wife has passed
from this life since — when they had reached mid-
Atlantic, a cablegram — one of those heartbreaking
cablegrams which we all in our days have to ex-
perience — was put into my hand. It stated that
that daughter of ours had gone to her long sleep.
And so, as I say, I cannot always be cheerful, and
I cannot always be chaffing; I must sometimes
lay the cap and bells aside, and recognize that I
am of the human race like the rest, and must have

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my cares and griefs. And therefore I noticed
what Mr. Birrell said — I was so glad to hear him
say it — something that was in the nature of these
verses here at the top of this :

" He lit our life with shafts of sun
And vanquished pain.
Thus two great nations stand as one
In honoring Twain/ '

I am very glad to have those verses. I am
very glad and very grateful for what Mr. Birrell
said in that connection. I have received since I
have been here, in this one week, hundreds of
letters from all conditions of people in England —
men, women, and children — and there is in them
compliment, praise, and, above all and better
than all, there is in them a note of affection.
Praise is well, compliment is well, but affection —
that is the last and final and most precious reward
that any man can win, whether by character or
achievement, and I am very grateful to have that
reward. All these letters make me feel that here
in England — as in America — when I stand under
the English flag, I am not a stranger. I am not
an alien, but at home.

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DEDICATION SPEECH

At the Dedication op the College op the City op
New York, May 14, 1908

Mr. Clemens wore his gown as Doctor of Laws, Oxford
University. Ambassador Bryce and Mr. Choate had
made the formal addresses.

HOW difficult, indeed, is the higher education.
Mr. Choate needs a little of it. He is not
only short as a statistician of New York, but he
is off, far off, in his mathematics. The four
thousand citizens of Greater New York, indeed!

But I don't think it was wise or judicious on
the part of Mr. Choate to show this higher educa-
tion he has obtained. He sat in the lap of that
great education (I was there at the time), and
see the result — the lamentable result. Maybe if
he had had a sandwich here to sustain him the
result would not have been so serious.

For seventy-two years I have been striving to
acquire that higher education which stands for
modesty and diffidence, and it doesn't work.

And then look at Ambassador Bryce, who referred
to his alma mater, Oxford. He might just as well
have included me. Well, I am a later production.

If I am the latest graduate, I really and sin-
cerely hope I am not the final flower of its seven
centuries ; I hope it may go on for seven ages longer.

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DIE SCHRECKEN DER DEUTSCHEN
SPRACHE

Address to the Vienna Press Club, November
21, 1897, as Delivered in German

ES hat mich tief geruhrt, meine Herren, hier
so gastfreundlich empfangen zu werden, von
Kollegen aus meinem eigenen Berufe, in diesem
von meiner eigenen Heimath so weit entferntem
Lande. Mein Herz ist voller Dankbarkeit, aber
meine Armuth an deutschen Worten zwingt mich
zu groszer Sparzamkeit des Ausdruckes. Ent-
schuldigen Sie, meine Herren, dasz ich verlese,
was ich Ihnen sagen will. (Er las aber nicht,
Anm. d. Ref.) Die deutsche Sprache spreche ich
nicht gut, doch haben mehrere Sachverstandige
mich versichert, dasz ich sie schreibe wie ein
Engel. Mag sein — ich weisz nicht. Habe bis
jetzt keine Bekanntschaften mit Engeln gehabt.
Das kommt spater — wenn's dem lieben Gott
gefallt — es hat keine Eile.

. Seit lange, meine Herren, habe ich die leiden-
schaftUche Sehnsucht gehegt, eine Rede auf
Deutsch zu halten, aber man hat mir's nie erlauben
wollen. Leute, die kein Geftihl fur die Kxmst

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THE HORRORS OF THE GERMAN
LANGUAGE

Address to the Vienna Press Club, November
21, 1897

[A Literal Translation]

IT has me deeply touched, my gentlemen, here
so hospitably received to be. From colleagues
out of my own profession, in this from my
own home so far distant land. My heart is full
of gratitude, but my poverty of German words
forces me to greater economy of expression. Ex-
cuse you, my gentlemen, that I read off, what I
you say Will. [But he didn't read].

The German language speak I not good, but
have numerous connoisseurs me assured that I
her write like an angel. Maybe — maybe — I know
not. Have till now no acquaintance with the
angglsjh&d. That comes later — when it the dear .
God j)lease — it has no hurry.

Since long, my gentlemen, have I the passionate
longing nursed a speech on German to hold, but

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hatten, legten mir immer Hindemisse in den Weg
und vereitelten meinen Wunsch — zuweilen durch
Vorwande, haufig durch Gewalt. Immer sagten
diese Leute zu mir: "Schweigen Sie, Ew. Hoch-
wohlgeboren! Ruhe, urn Gotteswillen! Suche
eine andere Art und Weise, Dich lastig zu mach-
en.

Im jetzigen Fall, wie gewohnlich, ist es mir
schwierig geworden, mir die Erlaubnisz zu ver-
schaffen. Das Comite bedauerte sehr, aber es
konnte mir die Erlaubnisz nicht bewilligen wegen
eines Gesetzes, das von der Concordia verlangt,
sie soil die deutsche Sprache schutzen. Du Hebe
Zeit! Wieso hatte man mir das sagen konnen —
mdgen — durfen — sollen? Ich bin ja der treueste
Freund der deutschen Sprache — und nicht nur
jetzt, sondern von lange her — ja vor zwanzig
Jahren schon. Und nie habe ich das Verlangen
gehabt, der edlen Sprache zu schaden, im Gegen-
theil, nur gewunscht, sie zu verbessern; ich wollte
sie bios reformiren. Es ist der Traum meines
Lebens gewesen. Ich habe schon Besuche bei
den verschiedenen deutschen Regierungen abge-
stattet und um Kontrakte gebeten. Ich bin
jetzt nach Oesterreich in demselben Auftrag
gekommen. Ich wurde nur einige Aenderungen
anstreben. Ich wurde bios die Sprachmethode —
die uppige, weitschweifige Konstruktion — zusam-
menrucken; die ewige Parenthese tmterdrucken,
abschaffen, vernichten; die Einfuhrung von mehr

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THE GERMAN LANGUAGE

one has me not permitted. Men, who no feel-
ing for the art had, laid me ever hindrance in the
way and made naught my desire — sometimes by
excuses, often by force. Always said these men
to me: "Keep you still, your Highness! Silence!
For God's sake seek another way and means
yourself obnoxious to make."

In the present case, as usual it is me difficult
become, for me the permission to obtain. The
committee sorrowed deeply, but could me the
permission not grant on account of a law which
from the Concordia demands she shall the Ger-
man language protect. Du liebe Zeit! How so
had one to me this say could — might — dared —
should? I am indeed the truest friend of the
German language — and not only now, but from
long since — yes, before twenty years already.
And never have I the desire had the noble lan-
guage to hurt; to the contrary, only wished she
to improve — I would her only reform. It is the
dream of my life been. I have already visits by
the various German governments paid and for
contracts prayed. I am now to Austria in the
same task come. I would only some changes
effect. I would only the language method — the lux-
urious, elaborate construction compress, the eternal
parenthesis suppress, do away with, annihilate;
the introduction of more than thirteen subjects
in one sentence forbid; the verb so far to the

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

als dreizehn Subjekten in einen Satz verbieten;
das Zeitwort so weit nach vorne riicken, bis man
es ohne Fernrohr entdecken kann. Mit einem
Wort, meine Herren, ich mochte Ihre geliebte
Sprache vereinfachen, auf dasz, meine Herren,
wenn Sie sie zum Gebet brauchen, man sie dort
oben versteht.

Ich flehe Sie an, von mir sich berathen zu lassen,
fuhren Sie diese erwahnten Reformen aus. Dann
werden Sie eine prachtvolle Sprache besitzen und
nachher, wenn Sie Etwas sagen wollen, werden Sie
wenigstens selber verstehen, was Sie gesagt haben.
Aber ofters heutzutage, wenn Sie einen meilen-
langen Satz von sich gegeben und Sie sich etwas
angelehnt haben, urn auszuruhen, dann mussen
Sie eine ruhrende Neugierde empfinden, selbst
herauszubringen, was Sie eigentlich gesprochen
haben* Vor mehreren Tagen hat der Korrespond-
ent einer hiesigen Zeitung einen Satz zustande
gebracht welcher hundertundzwolf Worte enthielt
und darin waren sieben Parenthese eingeschachtelt
und es wurde Das Subjekt siebenmal gewechselt.
Denken Sie nur, meine Herren, im Laufe der
Reise eines einzigen Satzes musz (fas arme, ver-
folgte, ermudete Subjekt siebenmal umsteigen.

Nun, wenn wir die erwahnten Reformen aus-
fuhren, wird's nicht mehre so arg sein. Doch
noch eins. Ich mochte gern das trennbare
Zeitwort auch ein Bischen reformiren. Ich
mochte Niemand thun lassen, was Schiller gethan :

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THE GERMAN LANGUAGE

front pull that one it without a telescope dis-
cover can. With one word, my gentlemen, I
would your beloved language simplify so that,
my gentlemen, when you her ior prayer need, One
her yonder-up understands. -

I beseech you, from me yourself counsel to let,
execute these mentioned reforms. Then will
you an elegant language possess, and afterward,
when you some thing say will, will you at least
yourself understand what you said had. But often
nowadays, when you a mile-long sentence from
you given and you yourself somewhat have rested,
then must you have a touching inquisitiveness
have yourself to determine what you actually
spoken have. Before several days has the cor-
respondent of a local paper a sentence constructed
which hundred and twelve words contain, and
therein were seven parentheses smuggled in, and
the subject seven times changed. Think you
only, my gentlemen, in the course of the voy-
age of a single sentence must the poor, perse-
cuted, fatigued subject seven times chai^ge posi-
tion!

Now, when we the mentioned reforms execute,
will it no longer so bad be. Doch noch eins. I
might gladly the separable verb also a little bit
reform. I might none do let what Schiller did:
he has the whole history of the Thirty Years'

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

Der hat die ganze Geschichte des dreizigjahrigen
Krieges zwischen die zwei Glieder eines trennbaren
Zeitwortes eingezwangt. Das hat sogar Deutsch-
land selbst emport; und man hat Schiller die
Erlaubnisz verweigert, die Geschichte des hundert
jahrigen Krieges zu verfassen — Gott sei's gedankt.
Nachdem alle diese Reformen festgestellt sein
werden, wird die deutsche Sprache die edelste
und die schonste auf der Welt sein.

Da Ihnen jetzt, meine Herren, der Charackter
meiner Mission bekannt ist, bitte ich Sie, so
freundlich zu sein und mir Ihre werthvolle Hilfe
zu schenken. Heir Potzl hat das Publikum
glauben machen wollen, dasz ich nach Wien
gekommen bin, urn die Brucken zu verstopfen und
den Verkehr zu hindern, wahrend ich Beobach-
tungen sammle und aufzeichne. Lassen Sie sich
aber nicht von ihm anfuhren. Meine haufige
Anwesenheit auf den Brucken hat einen ganz
unschuldigen Grund. Dort giebt's den nothigen
Raum. Dort kann man einen edlen, langen,
deutschen Satz ausdehnen, die Bruckengelander
entlang, und seinen ganzen Inhalt mit einem Blick
tibersehen. Auf das eine Ende des Gelanders
klebe ich das erste Glied eines trennbaren Zeit-
wortes und das Schluszglied klebe ich an's andere
Ende — dann breite ich den Leib des Satzes
dazwischen aus. Gewohnlich sind fur meinen
Zweck die Brucken der Stadt lang genug: wenn
ich aber Potzl's Schriften studiren will, fahre ich

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THE GERMAN LANGUAGE

War between the two members of a separable
verb in-pushed. That has even Germany itself
aroused, and one has Schiller the permission re-
fused the History of the Hundred Years' War to
compose — God be it thanked! After all these
reforms established be will, will the German
language the noblest and the prettiest on the
world be.

Since to you now, my gentlemen, the cnaracter
of my mission known is, beseech I you so friendly
to be and to me your valuable help grant. Mr.
Potzl has the public believed make would that I
to Vienna come am in order the bridges to clog
up and the traffic to hinder, while I observations
gather and note. Allow you yourselves but not
from him deceived. My frequent presence on the
bridges has an entirely innocent ground. Yonder
gives it the necessary space, yonder can one a
noble long German sentence elaborate, the bridge-
railing along, and his whole contents with one
glance overlook. On the one end of the railing
pasted I the first member of a separable verb and
the final member cleave I to the other end — then
spread the body of the sentence between it out!
Usually are for my purposes the bridges of the
city long enough; when I but Potzl's writings
study will I ride out and use the glorious endless
imperial bridge. But this is a calumny; Potzl
writes the prettiest German. Perhaps not so

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

liinaus und benutze die herrliche unendliche
Reichsbrucke. Aber das ist eine Verleumdung.
Potzl schreibt das schonste Deutsch. Vielleicht
nicht so biegsam wie das meinige, aber in manchen
Kleinigkeiten viel besser. Entschuldigen Sie diese
Schmeicheleien. Die sind wohl verdient. Nun
bringe ich meine Rede urn — nein — ich wollte
sagen, ich bringe sie zum Schlusz. Ich bin ein
Premder — aber hier, unter Ihnen, habe ich es
ganz vergessen. Und so, wieder, und noch wieder
— biete ich Ihnen meinen herzlichsten Dank!

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THE GERMAN LANGUAGE

pliable as the mine, but in many details much
better. Excuse you these flatteries. These are
well deserved.

Now I my speech execute — no, I would say I
bring her to the close. I am a foreigner — but^
here, under you, have I it entirely forgotten. And
so again and yet again proffer I you my heartiest
thanks."

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GERMAN FOR THE HUNGARIANS

Address at the Jubilee Celebration op the
Emancipation op the Hungarian Press,
March 26, 1899

The Ministry and members of Parliament were pres-
ent. The subject was the "Ausgleich" — i. e., the ar-
rangement for the apportionment of the taxes between
Hungary and Austria. Paragraph 14 of the ausgleich
fixes the proportion each country must pay to the
support of the army. It is the paragraph which
caused the trouble and prevented its renewal.

NOW that we are all here together, I think it
will be a good idea to arrange the ausgleich.
If you will act for Hungary I shall be quite willing
to act for Austria, and this is the very time for it.
There couldn't be a better, for we are all feeling
friendly, fair-minded, and hospitable now, and full
of admiration for each other, full of confidence in
each other, full of the spirit of welcome, full of
the grace of forgiveness, and the disposition to
let bygones be bygones.

Let us not waste this golden, this beneficent,
this providential opportunity. I am willing to
make any concession you want, just so we get it

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GERMAN FOR THE HUNGARIANS

settled. I am not only willing to let grain come
in free, I am willing to pay the freight on it, and
you may send delegates to the Reichsrath if you
like. All I require is that they shall be quiet,
peaceable people like your own deputies, and not
disturb our proceedings.

If you want the Gegenseitigengeldbeitragen-
denverhaltnismassigkeiten rearranged and read-
justed I am ready for that. I will let you off at
twenty-eight per cent. — twenty-seven — even
twenty-five if you insist, for there is nothing
illiberal about me when I am out on ^diplomatic
debauch.}

Now, in return for these concessions, I am willing
to take anything in reason, and I think we may
consider the business settled and the ausgleich
ausgegloschen at last for ten solid years, and we
will sign the papers in blank, and do it here and
now.

Well, I am unspeakably glad to have that
ausgleich off my hands. It has kept me awake
nights for anderthalbjahr.

But I never could settle it before, because always
when I called at the Foreign Office in Vienna to
talk about it, there wasn't anybody at home, and
that is not a place where you can go in and see
for yourself whether it is a mistake or not, because
the person who takes care of the front door there
is of a size that discourages liberty of action and
the free spirit of investigation. To think the
5 S3

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ausgleich is abgemacht at last! It is a grand and
beautiful consummation, and I am glad I came.

The way I feel now I do honestly believe I
would rather be just my own humble self at this
moment than paragraph 14.

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A NEW GERMAN WORD

To aid a local charity Mr. Clemens appeared before
a fashionable audience in Vienna, March 10, 1899,
reading his sketch " The Lucerne Girl" and describing
how he had been interviewed and ridiculed. He said
in part:

1HAVE not sufficiently mastered German to
allow my using it with impunity. My collec-
tion of fourteen - syllable German words is still
incomplete. But I have just added to that col-
lection a jewel — a veritable jewel. I found it in a
telegram from Linz, and it contains ninety-five
letters:

Personaleinkommensteuerschatzungskommissions-
mitgliedsreisekostenrechnungserganzungsrevisionsfund

If I could get a similar word engraved upon my
tombstone I should sleep beneath it in peace.

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UNCONSCIOUS PLAGIARISM

Delivered at the Dinner Given by the Pub-
lishers op "The Atlantic Monthly" to
Oliver Wendell Holmes, in Honor
op His Seventieth Birthday,
August 29, 1879

I WOULD have travelled a much greater distance
than I have come to witness the paying of honors
to Doctor Holmes ; for my feeling toward him has
always been one of peculiar warmth. When one
receives a letter from a great man for the first time
in his life, it is a large event to him, as all of you
know by your own experience. You never can
receive letters enough from famous men afterward
to obliterate that one, or dim the memory of the
pleasant surprise it was, and the gratification it
gave you . Lapse of time cannot make it common-
place or cheap.

Well, the first great man who ever wrote me a
letter was our guest — Oliver Wendell Holmes. He
was also the first great literary man I ever stole
anything from — and that is how I came to write
to him and he to me. When my first book was
new, a friend of mine said to me, "The dedication
is very neat." Yes, I said, I thought it was. My
friend said, "I always admired it, even before I

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UNCONSCIOUS PLAGIARISM

saw it in The Innocents Abroad. 9 ' I naturally said :
" What do you mean ? Where did you ever see it
before?" "Well, I saw it first some years ago as
Doctor Holmes's dedication to his Songs in Many
Keys." Of course, my first impulse was to pre-
pare this man's remains for burial, but upon re-
flection I said I would reprieve him for a moment
or two and give him a chance to prove his asser-
tion if he could. We stepped into a book-store,
and he did prove it. I had really stolen that dedi-
cation, almost word for word. I could not imagine
how this curious thing had happened; for I knew
one thing — that a certain amount of pride always
goes along with a teaspoonful of brains, and that
this pride protects a man from deliberately steal-
ing other people's ideas. That is what a teaspoon-
ful of brains will do for a man — and admirers had
often told me I had nearly a basketful — though
they were rather reserved as to the size of the
basket.

However, I thought the thing out, and solved
the mystery. Two years before, I had been laid
up a couple of weeks in the Sandwich Islands, and
had read and re-read Doctor Holmes's poems till
my mental reservoir was filled up with them to the
brim. The dedication lay on the top, and handy,
so, by-and-by, I unconsciously stole it. Perhaps
I unconsciously stole the rest of the volume, too,
for many people have told me that my book was
pretty poetical, in one way or another. Well, of

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

course, I wrote Doctor Holmes and told him I
hadn't meant to steal, and he wrote back and said
in the kindest way that it was all right and no
harm done ; and added that he believed we all un-
consciously worked over ideas gathered in reading
and hearing, imagining they were original with
ourselves. He stated a truth, and did it in such
a pleasant way, and salved over my sore spot so
gently and so healingly, that I was rather glad I
had committed the crime, for the sake of .the letter.
I afterward called on him and told him to make
perfectly free with any ideas of mine that struck
him as being good protoplasm for poetry. He
could see by that that there wasn't anything mean
about me; so we got along right from the start.
I have not met Doctor Holmes many times since;
and lately he said — However, I am wandering
wildly away from the one thing which I got on
my feet to do; that is, to make my compliments
to you, my fellow-teachers of the great public, and
likewise to say that I am right glad to see that
Doctor Holmes is still in his prime and full of
generous life; and as age is not determined by
years, but by trouble and infirmities of mind and
body, I hope it may be a very long time yet before
any one can truthfully say, "He is growing old."

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THE WEATHER

Address at the New England Society's Seventy-
first Annual Dinner, New York City

The next toast was: " The Oldest Inhabitant— The Weath-
er of New England."

Who can lose it and forget it?
Who can have it and regret it?

" Be interposer 'twixt us Twain."

— Merchant of Venice.

{REVERENTLY believe that-4fee- Maker who
ma de u g^all makes everything in New England
but the weather. I don't know who makes that, but
I think it must be raw apprentices in the weather-
clerk's factory who experiment and learn how, in
New England, for board and clothes, and then
are promoted to make weather for countries that
require a good article, and will take their custom
elsewhere if they don't get it. There is a sumptu-
ous variety about the New England weather that
compels the stranger's admiration — and regret.
The weather is always doing something there;
always attending strictly to business; always
getting up new designs and trying them on the
people to see how they will gp. But it gets

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

through more business in spring than in any other
season. In the spring I have counted one hun-
dred and thirty-six different kinds of weather
inside of four-and-twenty hours. j[jt was I that
made the fame and fortune of that man that had
that marvellous collection of weather on exhibi-
tion at the Centennial, that so astounded the
foreigners. He was going to travel all over the
world and get specimens from all the climes. I
said, " Don't you do it; you come to New England
on a favorable spring day." I told him what we
could do in the way of style, variety, and quantity.
Well, he came and he made his collection in four
days. As to variety, why, he confessed that he
got hundreds of kinds of weather that he had
never heard of before. And as to quantity —
well, after he had picked out and discarded all
that was blemished in any way, he not only had
weather enough, but weather to spare; weather
to hire out ; weather to sell ; to deposit ; weather
to invest; weather to give to the poor7\ The
people of New England are by nature patient and
forbearing, but there are some things which they
will not stand. Every year they kill a lot of
poets for writing about "Beautiful Spring."
These are generally casual visitors, who bring
their notions of spring from somewhere else, and
cannot, of course, know how the natives feel about
spring. And so the first thing they know the
opportunity to inquire how they feel has per-

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THE WEATHER

manently gone by. Old Probabilities has a
mighty reputation for accurate prophecy, and
thoroughly well deserves it. You take up the
paper and observe how crisply and confidently
he checks off what to-day's weather is going to
be on the Pacific, down South, in the Middle
States, in the Wisconsin region. See him sail
along in the joy and pride of his power till he gets
to New England, and then see his tail drop. He
doesn't know what the weather is going to be in
New England. Well, he mulls over it, and by-
and-by he gets out something about like this:
Probably northeast to southwest winds, varying
to the southward and westward and eastward,
and points between, high and low barometer
swapping around from place to place; probable
areas of rain, snow, hail, and drought, succeeded
or preceded by earthquakes, with thunder and
lightning. Then he jots down his postscript
from his wandering mind, to cover accidents.
"But it is possible that the programme may be
wholly changed in the mean time." Yes, one of
the brightest gems in the New England weather
is the dazzling uncertainty of it . There is only
one thing certain about it : you are certain there
is going to be plenty of it — a perfect grand review ;
but you never can tell which end of the procession
is going to move first. You fix up for the drought ;
you leave your umbrella in the house and sally out,
and two to one you get drowned. You make up

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

, your mind that the earthquake is due; you stand
/ from under, and take hold of something to steady
/ yourself, and the first thing you know you get
\§truck by lightning. These are great disappoint-
ments; but they can't be helped. The lightning
there is peculiar; it is so convincing, that when it
strikes a thing it doesn't leave enough of that
thing behind for you to tell whether — Well,
you'd think it was something valuable, and a
Congressman had been there. Tj^nd the thunder.
When the thunder begins to merely tune up and
scrape and saw, and key up the instruments for
the performance, strangers say, "Why, what
awful thunder you have here!" But when the
baton is raised and the real concert begins, you'll
find that stranger down in the cellar with his head
in the ash-barrel J Now as to the size of the
weather in New England — lengthways, I mean.
It is utterly disproportioned to the size of that
little country. Half the time, when it is packed
as full as it can stick, you will see that New Eng-
land weather sticking out beyond the edges and
projecting around hundreds and hundreds of
miles over the neighboring States. \J5he can't hold
a tenth part of her weather. You can see cracks
all about where she has strained herself trying to
do it. I could speak volumes about the inhuman \
( ^perversity of the New England weather, but I t
} will give but a single specimen. I like to hear
r?ui on a tin roof. So I covered part of my roof

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THE WEATHER

with tin, with an eye to that luxury. Well, sir, doj
you think it ever rains on that tin ? No, sir ; skips I
I it every timeT^Mind, in this speech I have been 1
| trying merelyto do honor to the New England

weather — no language could do it justice. But,y
Rafter all, there is at least one or two things about
that weather (or, if you please, effects produced
by it) which we residents would not like to part
with. If we hadn't our bewitching autumn foli-
age, we should still have to credit the weather
with one feature which compensates for all its
bullying vagaries — the ice-storm: when a leafless
tree is clothed with ice from the bottom to the top
— ice that is as bright and clear as crystal; when
every bough and twig is strung with ice-beads,
frozen dew-drops, and the whole tree sparkles
cold and white, like the Shah of Persia's diamond
plume. Then the wind waves the branches and
the sun comes out and turns all those myriads of
beads and drops %o prisms that glow and burn
and flash with all manner of colored fires, which
change and change again with inconceivable
rapidity from blue to red, from red to green, and
green to gold — the tree becomes a spraying foun-
tain, a very explosion of dazzling jewels; and it
stands there the acme, the climax, the supjremest
possibility in art or nature, of bewildering, intoxi-
cating, intolerable magnificence. One cannot
make the words too stroiig.

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THE BABIES

Delivered at the Banquet, in Chicago, Given

by the Army op the Tennessee to Their

First Commander, General U. S.

Grant, November, 1879

The fifteenth regular toast was " The Babies. — As
they comfort us in our sorrows, let us not forget them
in our festivities"

I LIKE that. We have not all had the good
fortune to be ladies. We have not all been
generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the
toast works down to the babies, we stand on
common ground. It is a shame that for a thou-
sand years the world's banquets have utterly
ignored the baby 1 , as if he didn't amount to any-
thing. If you will stop and. think a minute — if
you will go back fifty or one hundred years to
your early married life and recontemplate your
first baby — you will remember that he amounted
to a good deal, and even something over. You
soldiers all know that when that little fellow
arrived at family headquarters you had to hand
in your resignation. He took entire command.
You became his lackey, his mere body-servant,

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THE BABIES

and you had to stand around too. He was not
a commander who made allowances for time, dis-
tance, weather, or anything else. You had to
execute his order whether it was possible or not.
And there was only one form of marching in his
manual of tactics, and that was the double-quick.
He treated you with every sort of insolence and
disrespect, and the bravest of you didn't dare to
say a word. You could face the death-storm at
Donelson and Vicksburg, and give back blow for
blow; but when he clawed your whiskers, and
pulled your hair, and twisted your nose, you had
to take it. When the thunders of war were
sounding in your ears you set your faces toward
the batteries, and advanced with steady tread;
but when he turned on the terrors of his war-
whoop you advanced in the other direction, and
mighty glad of the chance, too. When he called
for soothing-syrup, did you venture to throw out
any side-remarks about certain services being un-
becoming an officer and a gentleman ? No. You
got up and got it. When he ordered his pap
bottle and it was not warm, did you talk back?
Not you. You went to work and warmed it. You
even descended so far in your menial office as to
take a suck at that warm, insipid stuff yourself,
to see if it was right — three parts water to one of
milk, a touch of sugar to modify the colic, and a
drop of peppermint to kill those immortal hic-
coughs. I can taste that stuff yet. And how

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

many things you learned as you went along!
Sentimental young folks still take stock in that
beautiful old saying that when the baby smiles
in his sleep, it is because the angels are whisper-
ing to him. Very pretty, but too thin — simply
wind on the stomach, my friends. If the baby
proposed to take a walk at his usual hour, two
o'clock in the morning, didn't you rise up prompt-
ly and remark, with a mental addition which
would not improve a Sunday-school book much,
that that was the very thing you were about to
propose yourself ? Oh! you were under good dis-
cipline, and as you went fluttering up and down
the room in your undress uniform, you not only
prattled undignified baby-talk, but even tuned
up your martial voices and tried to sing! — Rock-
a-by Baby in the Tree-top, for instance. What a
spectacle for an Army of the Tennessee! And
what an affliction for the neighbors, too; for it is
not everybody within a mile around that likes
military music at three in the morning. And
when you had been keeping this sort of thing
up two or three hours, and your little velvet-
head intimated that nothing suited him like
exercise and noise, what did you do? You
simply went on until you dropped in the last
ditch. The idea that a baby doesn't amount to
anything! Why, one baby is just a house and a
front yard full by itself. One baby can furnish
more business than you and your whole Interior

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THE BABIES

Department can attend to. He is enterprising,
irrepressible, brimful of lawless activities. Do
what you please, you can't make him stay on the
reservation. Sufficient unto the day is one baby.
As long as you are in your right mind don't you
ever pray for twins. Twins amount to a perma-
nent riot. And there ain't any real difference
between triplets and an insurrection.

Yes, it was high time for a toast-master to recog-
nize the importance of the babies. Think what
is in store for the present crop! Fifty years from
now we shall all be dead, I trust, and then this
flag, if it still survive (and let us hope it may),
will be floating over a Republic numbering 200,-
000,000 souls, according to the settled laws of our
increase. Our present schooner of State will have
grown into a political leviathan — a Great Eastern.
The cradled babies of to-day will be on deck.
Let them be well trained, for we are going to
leave a big contract on their hands. Among the
three or four million cradles now rocking in the
land are some which this nation would preserve
for ages as sacred things, if we could know which
ones they are. In one of these cradles the un-
conscious Farragut of the future is at this mo-
ment teething — think of it! — and putting in a
world of dead earnest, unarticulated, but per-
fectly justifiable profanity over it, too. In an-
other the future renowned astronomer is blinking
at the shining Milky Way with but a languid in-

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

terest — poor little chap! — and wondering what
has become of that other one they call the wet-
nurse. In another the future great historian
is lying — and doubtless will continue to lie until
his earthly mission is ended. In another the future
President is busying himself with no profounder
problem of state than what the mischief has
become of his hair so early ; and in a mighty array
of other cradles there are now some 60,000 future
office-seekers, getting ready to furnish him occa-
sion to grapple with that same old problem a
second time. And in still one more cradle, some-
where under the flag, the future illustrious com-
mander-in-chief of the American armies is so little
burdened with his approaching grandeurs and re-
sponsibilities as to be giving his whole strategic
mind at this moment to trying to find out some
way to get his big toe into his mouth — an achieve-
ment which, meaning no disrespect, the illustrious
guest of this evening turned his entire attention to
some fifty-six years ago; and if the child is but a
prophecy of the man, there are mighty few who
will doubt that he succeeded.

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OUR CHILDREN AND GREAT
DISCOVERIES

Delivered at the Authors* Club, New York

OUR children — yours — and — mine. They
seem like little things to talk about — our
children, but little things often make up the sum
of human life — that's a good sentence. I repeat
it, little things often produce great things. Now,
to illustrate, take Sir Isaac Newton — I presume
some of you have heard of Mr. Newton. Well,
once when Sir Isaac Newton — a mere lad — got
over into the man's apple orchard — I don't know
what he was doing there — I didn't come all the
way from Hartford to q-u-e-s-t-i-o-n Mr. New-
ton's honesty — but when he was there — in the
main orchard — he saw an apple fall and he was
a-t-t-racted toward it, and that led to the discov-
ery — not of Mr. Newton — but of the great law
of attraction and gravitation.

And there was once another great discoverer —

I've forgotten his name, and I don't remember

what he discovered, but I know it was something

very important, and I hope you will all tell your

6 69

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

children about it when you get home. Well,
when the great discoverer was once loafin' around
down in Virginia, and a-puttin' in his time flirting
with Pocahontas — oh! Captain John Smith, that
was the man's name — and while he and Poca were
sitting in Mr. Powhatan's garden, he accidentally
put his arm around her and picked something —
a simple weed, which proved to be tobacco — and
now we find it in every Christian family, shedding
its civilizing influence broadcast throughout the
whole religious community.

Now there was another great man, I can't think
of his name either, who used to loaf around and
watch the great chandelier in the cathedral at
Pisa, which set him to thinking about the great
law of gunpowder, and eventually led to the dis-
covery of the cotton-gin.

Now, I don't say this as an inducement for our
young men to loaf around like Mr. Newton and
Mr. Galileo and Captain Smith, but they were
once little babies two days old, and they show
what little things have sometimes accomplished.

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EDUCATING THEATRE-GOERS

The children of the Educational Alliance gave a
performance of " The Prince and the Pauper " on the
afternoon of April 14, 1907, in the theatre of the Al-
liance Building in East Broadway. The audience
was composed of nearly one thousand children of the
neighborhood. Mr. Clemens, Mr. Howells, and Mr.
Daniel Frohman were among the invited guests.

I HAVE not enjoyed a play so much, so heartily,
and so thoroughly since I played Miles Hendon
twenty-two years ago. I used to play in this
piece ("The Prince and the Pauper") with my
children, who, twenty-two years ago, were little
youngsters. One of my daughters was the Prince,
and a neighbor's daughter was the Pauper, and
the children of other neighbors played other parts.
But we never gave such a performance as we have
seen here to-day. It would have been beyond us.
My late wife was the dramatist and stage-man-
ager. Our coachman was the stage-manager,
second in command. We used to play it in this
simple way, and the one who used to bring in the
crown on a cushion — he was a little fellow then —
is now 3 cl< "gyman way up higlj — six or seven

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES;

feet high — and growing higher all the time. We
played it well, but not as well as you see it here,
for you see it done by practically trained pro-
fessionals.

I was especially interested in the scene which
we have just had, for Miles Hendon was my part.
I did it as well as a person could who never remem-
bered his part. The children all knew their parts.
They did not mind if I did not know mine. I
could thread a needle nearly as well as the player
did whom you saw to-day. The words of my
part I could supply on the spot. The words of
the song that Miles Hendon sang here I did not
catch. But I was great in that song.

[Then Mr. Clemens hummed a bit of doggerel
that the reporter made out as this:

"There was a woman in her town,
She loved her husband well,
But another man just twice as well."

"How is that ?" demanded Mr. Clemens. Then
resuming :]

It was so fresh and enjoyable to make up a
new set of words each time that I played the part.

If I had a thousand citizens in front of me, I
would like to give them information, but you
children already know all that I have found out
about the Educational Alliance. It's like a man
living within thirty miles of Vesuvius and never
knowing about a volcano. It's like living for a

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EDUCATING THEATRE-GOERS

lifetime in Buffalo, eighteen miles from Niagara,
and never going to see the Falls. So I had lived
in New York and knew nothing about the Educa-
tional Alliance.

This theatre is a part of the work, and furnishes
pure and clean plays. This theatre is an in-
fluence. Everything in the world is accom-
plished by influences which train and educate.
When you get to be seventy-one and a half, as I
am, you may think that your education is over,
but it isn't.

If we had forty theatres of this kind in this city
of four millions, how they would educate and
elevate! We should have a body of educated
theatre-goers.

It would make better citizens, honest citizens.
One of the best gifts a millionaire could make
would be a theatre here and a theatre there. It
would make of you a real Republic, and bring about
an educational level.

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THE EDUCATIONAL THEATRE

On November 19, 1907, Mr. Clemens entertained a
party of six or seven hundred of his friends, inviting
them to witness the representation of "The Prince and
the Pauper" played by boys and girls of the East Side
at the Children's Educational Theatre, New York.

JUST a word or two to let you know how deeply
I appreciate the honor which the children who
are the actors and frequenters of this cozy play-
house have conferred upon me. They have asked
me to be their ambassador to invite the hearts
and brains of New York to come down here and
see the work they are doing. I consider it a grand
distinction to be chosen as their intermediary.
Between the children and myself there is an indis-
soluble bond of friendship.

T am proud of this theatre and this performance
— proud, because I am naturally vain — vain of
myself and proud of the children.

I wish we could reach more children at one
time. I am glad to see that the children of the
East Side have turned their backs on the Bowery
theatres to come to see the pure entertainments
presented here.

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THE EDUCATIONAL THEATRE

This Children's Theatre is a great educational
institution. I hope the time will come when
it will be part of every public school in the land.
I may be pardoned in being vain. I was born
vain, I guess. [At this point the stage-manager's
whistle interrupted Mr. Clemens.] That settles
it; there's my cue to stop. I was to talk until
the whistle blew, but it blew before I got started.
It takes me longer to get started than most people.
I guess I was born at slow speed. My time is up,
and if you'll keep quiet for two minutes I'll tell
you something about Miss Herts, the woman who
conceived this splendid idea. She is the originator
and the creator of this theatre. Educationally,
this institution coins the gold of young hearts into
external good.

[On April 23, 1908, he spoke again at the same place]

I will be strictly honest with you; I am only
fit to be honorary president. It is not to be
expected that I should be useful as a real presi-
dent. But when it comes to things ornamental I,
of course, have no objection. There is, of course,
no competition. I take it as a very real compli-
ment because there are thousands of children who
have had a part in- this request. It is promotion
in truth.

It is a thing worth doing that is done here. You
have seen the children play. You saw how little

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THE CHILDREN'S THEATRE

Sally reformed her burglar. She could reform
any burglar. She could reform me. This is the
only school in which can be taught the highest and
most difficult lessons — morals. In other schools
the way of teaching morals is revolting. Here the
children who come in thousands live through each
part.

They are terribly anxious for the villain to get
his bullet, and that I take to be a humane and
proper sentiment. They spend freely the ten
cents that is not saved without a struggle. It
comes out of the candy money, and the money
that goes for chewing-gum and other necessaries
of life. They make the sacrifice freely. This is
the only school which they are sorry to leave.

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POETS AS POLICEMEN

Mr. Clemens was one of the speakers at the Lotos
Club dinner to Governor Odell, March 24, 1900. The
police problem was referred to at length.

LET us abolish policemen who carry clubs and
-# revolvers, and put in a squad of poets armed
to the teeth with poems on Spring and Love. I
would be very glad to serve as commissioner, not
because I think I am especially qualified, but
because I am too tired to work and would like to
take a rest.

Howells would go well as my deputy. He is
tired too, and needs a rest badly.

I would start in at once to elevate, purify, and
depopulate the red-light district. I would assign
the most soulful poets to that district, all heavily
armed with their poems. Take Chauncey Depew
as a sample. I would station them on the corners
after they had rounded up all the depraved peo-
ple of the district so they could not escape, and
then have them read from their poems to the
poor unfortunates. The plan would be very ef-
fective in causing an emigration of the depraved
element.

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PUDD'NHEAD WILSON DRAMATIZED

When Mr. Clemens arrived from Europe in 1895
one of the first things he did was to see the dramatiza-
tion of Pudd'nhead Wilson. The audience becoming
aware of the fact that Mr. Clemens was in the house
called upon him for a speech.

NEVER in my life have I been able to make
a speech without preparation, and I assure
you that this position in which I find myself is
one totally unexpected.

I have been hemmed in all day by William Dean
Howells and other frivolous persons, and I have
been talking about everything in the world ex-
cept that of which speeches are constructed.
Then, too, seven days on the water is not con-
ducive to speech-making. I will only say that I
congratulate Mr. Mayhew; he has certainly made
a delightful play out of my rubbish. His is a
charming gift* Confidentially I have always had
an idea that I was well equipped to write plays,
but I have never encountered a manager who has
agreed with me.

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DALY THEATRE

Address at a Dinner After the One Hundredth

Performance of "The Taming of the

Shrew."

Mr. Clemens made the following speech, which he
incorporated afterward in Following the Equator.

I AM glad to be here. This is the hardest theatre
in New York to get into, even at the front
door. I never got in without hard work. I am
glad we have got so far in at last. Two or three
years ago I had an appointment to meet Mr. Daly
on the stage of this theatre at eight o'clock in
the evening. Well, I got on a train at Hartford to
come to New York and keep the appointment.
All I had to do was to come to the back door of the
theatre on Sixth Avenue. I did not believe that ;
I did not believe it could be on Sixth Avenue, but
that is what Daly's note said — come to that door,
walk right in, and keep the appointment. It look-
ed very easy. It looked easy enough, but I had
not much confidence in the Sixth Avenue door.
Well, I was kind of bored on the train, and
I bought some newspapers — New Haven news-

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

papers — and there was not much news in them,
so I read the advertisements. There was one
advertisement of a bench-show. I had heard of
bench - shows, and I often wondered what there
was about them to interest people. I had seen
bench-shows — lectured to bench-shows, in fact —
but I didn't want to advertise them or to brag
about them. Well, I read on a little, and learned
that a bench-sliow was not a bench-show — but
dogs, not benches at all — only dogs. I began to
be interested, and as there was nothing else to do
I read every bit of the advertisement, and learned
that the biggest thing in this show was a St.
Bernard dog that weighed one hundred and forty-
five pounds. Before I got to New York I was so
interested in the bench-shows that I made up my
mind to go to one the first chance I got. Down
on Sixth Avenue, near where that back door
might be, I began to take things leisurely. I did
not like to be in too much of a hurry. There was
not anything in sight that looked like a back door.
The nearest approach to it was a cigar store.. So
I went in and bought a cigar, not too expensive,
but it cost enough to pay for any information I
might get and leave the dealer a fair profit. Well,
I did not like to be too abrupt, to make the man
think me crazy, by asking him if that was the way
to Daly's Theatre, so I started gradually to lead
up to the subject, asking him first if that was the
way to Castle Garden. When I got to the real

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DALY THEATRE

question, and he said he would show me the way,
I was astonished. He sent me through a long
hallway, and I found myself in a back yard.
Then I went through a long passageway and into
a little room, and there before my eyes was a big
St. Bernard dog lying on a bench. There was
another door beyond and I went there, and was
met by a big, fierce man with a fur cap on and
coat off, who remarked, "Phwat do yez want?"
I told him I wanted to see Mr. Daly. " Yez can't
see Mr. Daly this time of night/' he responded.
I urged that I had an appointment with Mr. Daly,
and gave him my card, which did not seem to
impress him much. "Yez can't get in and yez
can't shmoke here. Throw away that cigar. If
yez want to see Mr. Daly, yez '11 have to be after
going to the front door and buy a ticket, and
then if yez have luck and he's around that way
yez may see him." I was getting discouraged,
but I had one resource left that had been of good
service in similar emergencies. Firmly but kindly
I told him my name was Mark Twain, and I
awaited results. There was none. He was not
fazed a bit. "Phwere's your order to see Mr.
Daly?" he asked. I handed him the note, and he
examined it intently. "My friend," I remarked,
"you can read that better if you hold it the other
side up." But he took no notice of the suggestion,
and finally asked: "Where's Mr. Daly's name?"
"There it is," I told him, "on the top of the page."

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

"That's all right," he said, "that's where he
always puts it; but I don't see the 'W' in his
name," and he eyed me distrustfully. Finally he
asked, "Phwat do yez want to see Mr. Daly for?"
"Business." "Business?" "Yes." It was my
only hope. ' ' Phwat kind — theatres ?" That was
too much. "No." "What kind of shows, then ?"
"Bench-shows." It was risky, but I was desper-
ate. "Bench-shows, is it — where?" The big
man's face changed, and he began to look in-
terested. "New Haven." "New Haven, it is?
Ah, that's going to be a fine show. I'm glad to
see you. Did you see a big dog in the other
room?" "Yes." "How much do you think
that dog weighs ?" "One hundred and forty-five
pounds*" "Look at that, now! He's a good
judge of dogs, and no mistake. He weighs all of
one hundred and thirty-eight. Sit down and
shmoke — go on and shmoke your cigar, I'll tell
Mr. Daly you are here." In a few minutes I was
on the stage shaking hands with Mr. Daly, and
the big man standing around glowing with satis-
faction. "Come around in front," said Mr. Daly,
"and see the performance. I will put you into
my own box." And as I moved away I heard my
honest friend mutter, "Well, he desarves it."

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THE DRESS OF CIVILIZED WOMAN

A LARGE} part of the daughter of civilization
is her dress — as it should be. Some civilized
women would lose half their charm without dress,
and some would lose all of it. The daughter of
modern civilization dressed at her utmost best is a
marvel of exquisite and beautiful art and expense.
All the lands, all the climes, and all the arts are
laid under tribute to furnish her forth. Her
linen is from Belfast, her robe is from Paris, her
lace is from Venice, or Spain, or France, her
feathers are from the remote regions of Southern
Africa, her furs from the remoter region of the
iceberg and the aurora, her fan from Japan, her
diamonds from Brazil, her bracelets from Cali-
fornia, her pearls from Ceylon, her cameos from
Rome. She has gems and trinkets from buried
Pompeii, and others that graced comely Egyptian
forms that have been dust and ashes now for forty
centuries. Her watch is from Geneva, her card-
case is from China, her hair is from — from — I
don't know where her hair is from ; I never could
find out; that is, her other hair — her public hair,

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

her Sunday hair; I don't mean the hair she goes
to bed with. . . .

And that reminds me of a trifle. Any time you
want to you can glance around the carpet of a
Pullman car, and go and pick up a hair-pin; but
not to save your life can you get any woman in
that car to acknowledge that hair-pin. Now,
isn't that strange? But it's true. The woman
who has never swerved from cast-iron veracity
and fidelity in her whole life will, when confronted
with this crucial test, deny her hair-pin. She will
deny that hair-pin before a hundred witnesses. I
have stupidly got into more trouble and more hot
water trying to hunt up the owner of a hair-pin
in a Pullman than by any other indiscretion of my
life.

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DRESS REFORM AND COPYRIGHT

When the present copyright law was under dis-
cussion, Mr. Clemens appeared before the committee.
He had sent Speaker Cannon the following letter:

" Dear Uncle Joseph, — Please get me the thanks
of Congress, not next week but right away. It is very
necessary. Do accomplish this for your affectionate
old friend right away — by persuasion if you can, by
violence if you must, for it is imperatively necessary
that I get on the floor of the House for two or three
hours and talk to the members, man by man, in be-
half of support, encouragement, and protection of one
of the nation's most valuable assets and industries
— its literature. I have arguments with me — also a
barrel with liquid in it.

" Give me a chance. Get me the thanks of Congress.
Don't wait for others — there isn't time; furnish them
to me yourself and let Congress ratify later. I have
stayed away and let Congress alone for seventy-one
years and am entitled to the thanks. Congress knows
this perfectly well, and I have long felt hurt that this
quite proper and earned expression of gratitude has
been merely felt by the House and never publicly
uttered.

" Send me an order on the sergeant-at-arms quick.
When shall I come?

"With love and a benediction,

"Mark Twain."
7 85

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

While waiting to appear before the committee, Mr.
Clemens talked to the reporters:

WHY don't you ask why I am wearing such
apparently unseasonable clothes? I'll tell
you. I have found that when a man reaches the
advanced age of seventy-one years, as I have, the
continual sight of dark clothing is likely to have
a depressing effect upon him. Light-colored
clothing is more pleasing to the eye and enlivens
the spirit. Now, of course, I cannot compel every
one to wear such clothing just for my especial ben-
efit, so I do the next best thing and wear it myself.

Of course, before a man reaches my years the
fear of criticism might prevent him from indulg-
ing his fancy. I am not afraid of that. I am
decidedly for pleasing color combinations in dress.
I like to see the women's clothes, say, at the
opera. What can be more depressing than the
sombre black which custom requires men to wear
upon state occasions ? A group of men in even-
ing clothes looks like a flock of crows, and is just
about as inspiring.

After all^what is the purpose-of clothing? Are
not clothes intended primarily to preserve dignity
and also to afford comfort to their wearer ? Now
I know of nothing more uncomfortable than the
present-day clothes of men. The finest clothing
made is a person's own skin, but, of course,
society demands something more than this.

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DRESS REFORM AND COPYRIGHT

The best-dressed man I have ever seen, -how^
ever, was a native of the Sandwich Islands who
attracted my attention thirty years ago. Now,
when that man wanted to don especial dress to
honor a public occasion or a holiday, why, he
occasionally put on a pair of spectacles. Other-
wise the clothing with which God had provided
him sufficed.

Of course, I have ideas of dress reform. For
one thing, why not adopt some of the women's
styles? Goodness knows, they adopt enough of
ours. Take the peek-a-boo waist, for instance.
It has the obvious advantages of being cool and
comfortable, Jand in addition it is almost always
made up in pleasing colors which cheer and do
not depress.

It is true that I dressed the Connecticut Yankee
at King Arthur's Court in a plug-hat, but, let's
see, that was twenty-five years ago. Then no
man was considered fully dressed until he donned
a plug - hat. Nowadays I think that no man is
dressed until he leaves it home. Why, when I
left home yesterday they trotted out a plug-hat
for me to wear.

"You must wear it," they told me; "why, just
think of going to Washington without a plug-hat!"
But I said no; I would wear a derby or nothing.
Why, I believe I could walk along the streets of
New York — I never do — but still I think I could
— and I should never see a well-dressed man wear-

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

ing a plug-hat. If I did I should suspect him of
something. I don't know just what, but I would
suspect him.

Why, when I got up on the second story of that
Pennsylvania ferry-boat coming down here yes-
terday I saw Howells coming along. He was the
only man on the boat with a plug-hat, and I tell
you he felt ashamed of himself. He said he had
been persuaded to wear it against his better sense.
But just think of a man nearly seventy years old
who has not a mind of his own on such mat-
ters!

"Are you doing any work now?" the youngest
and most serious reporter asked.

Work? I retired from work on my seventieth
birthday. Since then I have . been putting in
merely twenty-six hours a day dictating my
autobiography, /which, as John Phoenix said in
regard to his autograph, may be relied upon as
authentic, as it is written exclusively by me. )
But it is not to be published in full until I am'
thoroughly dead. I have made it as caustic,
fiendish, and devilish as possible. It will fill
many volumes, and I shall continue writing it
until the time comes for me to join the angels.
It is going to be a terrible autobiography. It will
make the hair of some folks curl. But it cannot
be published until I am dead, and the persons
mentioned in it and their children and grand-
children are dead. It is something awful!

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DRESS REFORM AND COPYRIGHT

"Can you tell us the names of some of the
notables that are here to see you off ?"

I don't know. I am so shy. My shyness takes
a peculiar phase. I never look a person in the
face. The reason is that I am afraid they may
know me and that I may not know them, which
makes it very embarrassing for both of us. I
always wait for the other person to speak. I
know lots of people, but I don't know who they
are. It is all a matter of ability to observe things.
I never observe anything now. I gave up the
habit years ago. You should keep a habit up if
^rou TVant to become proficient in it. For in-
stance, I was a pilot once, but I gave it up, and
I do not believe the captain of the Minneapolis
would let me navigate his ship to London. Still,
if I think that he is not on the job I may go up
on the bridge and offer him a few suggestions. ,

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COLLEGE GIRLS

Five hundred undergraduates, under the auspices of
the Woman's University Club, New York, welcomed
Mr. Clemens as their guest, April 3, 1906, and gave him
the freedom of the club, which the chairman explained
was freedom to talk individually to any girl present.

I'VE worked for the public good thirty years, so
for the rest of my life I shall work for my per-
sonal contentment. I am glad Miss Neron has fed
me, for there is no telling what iniquity I might
wander into on an empty stomach — I mean, an
empty mind.

I am going to tell you a practical story about
how once upon a time I was blind — a story I
should have been using all these months, but I
never thought about telling it until the other
night, and now it is too late, for on the nineteenth
of this month I hope to take formal leave of the
platform forever at Carnegie Hall — that is, take
leave so far as talking for money and for people
who have paid money to hear me talk. I shall
continue to infest the platform on these conditions
— that there is nobody in the house who has paid
to hear me, that I am not paid to be heard, and

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COLLEGE GIRLS

that there will be none but young women students
in the audience. [Here Mr. Clemens told the
story of how he took a girl to the theatre while
he was wearing tight boots, which appears else-
where in this volume, and ended by saying:
"And now let this be a lesson to you — I don't
know what kind of a lesson; I'll let you think
it out."]

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GIRLS

IN my capacity of publisher I recently received
a manuscript from a teacher which embodied a
number of answers given by her pupils to ques-
tions propounded. These answers show that the
children had nothing but the sound to go by — the
sense was perfectly empty. Here are some of
their answers to words they were asked to define :
Auriferous — pertaining to an orifice; ammonia — ■
the food of the gods; equestrian — one who asks
questions ; parasite — a kind of umbrella; ipecac —
a man who likes a good dinner. And here is the
definition of an ancient word honored by a great
party: Republican — a sinner mentioned in the
Bible. And here is an innocent deliverance of a
zoological kind : "There are a good many donkeys
in the theological gardens." Here also is a defi-
nition which really isn't very bad in its way:
Demagogue — a vessel containing beer and other
liquids. Here, too, is a sample of a boy's com-
position on girls, which, I must say, I rather like:
"Girls are very stuckup and dignified in their
manner and behaveyour. They think more of
dress than anything and like to play with dowls

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GIRLS

and rags. They cry if they see a cow in a far
distance and are afraid of guns. They stay at
home all the time and go to church every Sunday.
They are al-ways sick. They are al-ways funy
and making fun of boys hands and they say how
dirty. They cant play marbles. I pity them
poor things. They make fun of boys and then
turn round and love them. I don't belave they
ever kiled a cat or anything. They look out every
nite and say, 'Oh, a'nt the moon lovely!' Thir
is one thing I have not told and that is they al-ways
now their lessons bettern boys."

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THE LADIES

Delivered at the Anniversary Festival, 1872,
op the Scottish Corporation op London

Mr. Clemens replied to the toast " The Ladies"

I AM proud, indeed, of the distinction of being
chosen to respond to this especial toast, to "The
Ladies/' or to women if you please, for that is
the preferable term, perhaps; it is certainly the
older, and therefore the more entitled to rever-
ence. 1 1 have noticed that the Bible, with that
plain, blunt honesty which is such a conspicuous
characteristic of the Scriptures, is always particu-
lar to never refer to even the illustrious mother of
all mankind as a "lady," but speaks of her as a
woman, jit is odd, but you will find it is so. I
am peculiarly proud of this honor, because I think
that the toast to women is one which, by right
and by every rule of gallantry, should take pre-
cedence of all others — of the army, of the navy,
of even royalty itself — perhaps, though the latter
is not necessary in this day and in this land, for
the reason that, tacitly, you do drink a broad
general health to all good women when you drink

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THE LADIES

the health of the Queen of England and the Prin-
cess of Wales. I have in mind a poem just now
which is familiar to you all, familiar to everybody.
And what an inspiration that was, and how in-
stantly the present toast recalls the verses to all
our minds when the most noble, the most
gracious, the purest, and sweetest of all poets
says:

"Woman! O woman! er

Worn "

However, you remember the lines; and you
remember how feelingly, how daintily, how almost
imperceptibly the verses raise up before you,
feature by feature, the ideal of a true and perfect
woman ; and how, as you contemplate the finished
marvel, your homage grows into worship of the
intellect that could create so fair a thing out of
mere breath, mere words. And you call to mind
now, as I speak, how the poet, with stern fidelity
to the history of all humanity, delivers this beauti-
ful child of his heart and his brain over to the
trials and sorrows that must come to all, sooner
or later, that abide in the earth, and how the
pathetic story culminates in that apostrophe —
so wild, so regretful, so full of mournful retro-
spection. The lines run thus:

" Alas! — alas! — a — alas!
Alas! alas!"

— and so on. I do not remember the rests but,

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

taken together, it seems to me that poem is the
noblest tribute to woman that human genius has
ever brought forth — and I feel that if I were to
talk hours I could not do my great theme com-
pleter or more graceful justice than I have now
done in simply quoting that poet's matchless
words. The phases of the womanly nature are
infinite in their variety. Take any type of woman,
and you shall find in it something to respect,
something to admire, something to love. And you
shall find the whole joining you heart and hand.
Who was more patriotic than Joan of Arc ? Who
was braver? Who has given us a grander in-
stance of self-sacrificing devotion? Ah! you
remember, you remember well, what a throb of
pain, what a great tidal wave of grief swept over
us all when Joan of Arc fell at Waterloo. Who
does not sorrow for the loss of Sappho, the sweet
singer of Israel? Who among us does not miss
the gentle ministrations, the softening influences,
the humble piety of Lucretia Borgia? Who can
join in the heartless libel that says woman is ex-
travagant in dress when he can look back and call
to mind our simple and lowly mother Eve arrayed
in her modification of the Highland costume ? Sir,
women have been soldiers, women have been
painters, women have been poets. As long as
language lives the name of Cleopatra will live.
And not because she conquered George III. — but
because she wrote those divine lines:

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THE LADIES

" Let dogs delight to bark and bite,
For God hath made them so."

The story of the world is adorned with the
names of illustrious ones of our own sex — some
of them sons of St. Andrew, too — Scott, Bruce,
Burns, the warrior Wallace, Ben Nevis — the gifted
Ben Lomond, and the great new Scotchman, Ben
Disraeli.* Out of the great plains of history
tower whole mountain ranges of sublime women —
the Queen of Sheba, Josephine, Semiramis, Sairey
Gamp; the list is endless — but I will not call the
mighty roll, the names rise up in your own memo-
ries at the mere suggestion, luminous with the
glory of deeds that cannot die, hallowed by the
loving worship of the good and the true of all
epochs and all climes. Suffice it for our pride
and our honor that we in our day have added to it
such names as those of Grace Darling and Florence
Nightingale. Woman is all that she should be —
gentle, patient, longsuffering, trustful, unselfish,
full of generous impulses. It is her blessed mis-
sion to comfort the sorrowing, plead for the erring,
encourage the faint of purpose, succor the dis-
tressed, uplift the fallen, befriend the friendless —
in a word, afford the healing of her sympathies
and a home in- her heart for all the bruised and

♦Mr. Benjamin Disraeli, at that time Prime Minister of Eng-
land, had just been elected Lord Rector of Glasgow University,
and had made a speech which gave rise to a world of
discussion.

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

persecuted children of misfortune that knock at
its hospitable door. And when I say, God bless
her, there is none among us who has known the
ennobling affection of a wife, or thu steadfast
devotion of a mother but in his heart will say,
Amen!

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WOMAN'S PRESS CLUB

On October 27, 1900, the New York Woman's Press
Club gave a tea in Carnegie Hall. Mr. Clemens was
the guest of honor.

IF I were asked an opinion I would call this an
ungrammatical nation. There is no such thing
as perfect grammar, and I don't always speak
good grammar myself. But I have been fore-
gathering for the past few days with professors
of American universities, and I've heard them all
say things like this: "He don't like to do it/'
[There was a stir.] Oh, you'll hear that to-night
if you listen, or, "He would have liked to have
done it." You'll catch some educated Americans
saying that. When these men take pen in hand
they write with as good grammar as any. But
the moment they throw the pen aside they throw
grammatical morals aside with it.

To illustrate the desirability and possibility
of concentration, I must tell you a story of my
little six-year-old daughter. The governess had
been teaching her about the reindeer, and, as the
custom was, she related it to the family. She
reduced the history of that reindeer to two or

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

three sentences when the governess could not
have put it into a page. She said : "The reindeer
is a very swift animal. A reindeer once drew a
sled four hundred miles in two hours." She ap-
pended the comment: "This was regarded as
extraordinary." And concluded: "When that
reindeer was done drawing that sled four hundred
miles in two hours it died."

As a final instance of the force of limitations
in the development of concentration, I must
mention that beautiful creature, Helen Keller,
whom I have known for these many years. I am
filled with the wonder of her knowledge, acquired
because shut out from all distraction. If I could
have been deaf, dumb, and blind I also might
have arrived at something.

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VOTES FOR WOMEN

At the Annual Meeting op the Hebrew Tech-
nical School for Girls, Held in the
Temple Emmanuel, January
20, 1 901

Mr. Clemens was introduced by President Meyer,
who said: " In one of Mr. Clemens' s works he expressed
his opinion of men, saying he had no choice between
Hebrew and Gentile, black men or white; to him all
men were alike. But I never could find that he expressed
his opinion of women; perhaps that opinion was so
exalted that he could not express it. We shall now
be called to hear what he thinks of women."

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,— It is a small
-# help that I can afford, but it is just such help
that onfe can give as coming from the heart
through the mouth. The report of Mr. Meyer
was admirable, and I was as interested in it as
you have been. Why, I'm twice as old as he,
and I've had so much experience that I would say
to him, when he makes his appeal for help : "Don't
make it for to-day or to-morrow, but collect the
money on the spot."
We are all creatures of sudden impulse. We
s 101

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

must be worked up by steam, as it were. Get
them to write their wills now, or it may be too late
by-and-by. Fifteen or twenty years ago I had
an experience I shall never forget. I got into a
church which was crowded by a sweltering and
panting multitude. The city missionary of our
town — Hartford — made a telling appeal for help.
He told of personal experiences among the poor
in cellars and top lofts requiring instances of de-
votion and help. The poor are always good to
the poor. When a person with his millions gives
a hundred thousand dollars it makes a great
noise in the world, but he does not miss it; it's
the widow's mite that makes no noise but does
the best work.

I remember on that occasion in the Hartford
church the collection was being taken up. The
appeal had so stirred me that I could hardly wait
for the hat or plate to come my way. I had four
hundred dollars in my pocket, and I was anxious
to drop it in the plate and wanted to borrow more.
But the plate was so long in coming my way that
the fever-heat of beneficence was going down
lower and lower — going down at the rate of a
hundred dollars a minute. The plate was passed
too late. When it finally came to me, my en-
thusiasm had gone down so much that I kept my
four hundred dollars — and stole a dime from the
plate. So, you see, time sometimes leads to crime.

Oh, many a time have I thought of that and
102

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VOTES FOR WOMEN

regretted it, and I adjure you all to give while
the fever is on you.

Referring to woman's sphere in life, I'll say that
woman is always right. For twenty-five years
I've been a woman's rights man. I have always
believed, long before my mother died, that, with
her gray hairs and admirable intellect, perhaps
she knew as much as I did. Perhaps she knew
as much about voting as I.

I should like to see the time come when women
shall help to make the laws. I should like to see
that whip-lash, the ballot, in the hands of women.
As for this city's government, I don't want to say
much, except that it is a shame — a shame; but
if I should live twenty-five years longer — and
there is no reason why I shouldn't — I think I'll
see women handle the ballot. If women had the
ballot to-day, the state of things in this town
would not exist.

If all the women in this town had a vote to-day
they would elect a mayor at the next election,
and they would rise in their might and change the
awful state of things now existing here.

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WOMAN— AN OPINION

Address at an Early Banquet op the Washing-
ton Correspondents' Club

The twelfth toast was as follows: "Woman — The
pride of any profession, and the jewel of ours."

MR. PRESIDENT,— I do not know why I
should be singled out to receive the greatest
distinction of the evening — for so the office of
replying to the toast of woman has been regarded
in every age. I do not know why I have received
this distinction, unless it be that I am a trifle less
homely than the other members of the club.
But be this as it may, Mr. President, I am proud
of the position, and you could not have chosen
any one who would have accepted it more gladly,
or labored with a heartier good-will to do the
subject justice than I — because, sir, I love the
sex. I love all the women, irrespective of age
or color.

Human intellect cannot estimate what we owe
to woman, sir. She sews on our buttons; she
mends ouf clothes; she ropes us in at the church

104

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WOMAN

fairs; she confides in us; she tells us whatever
she can find out about the little private affairs of
the neighbors; she gives us good advice, and
plenty of it; she soothes our aching brows; she
bears our children — ours as a general thing. In
all relations of life, sir, it is but a just and graceful
tribute to woman to say of her that she is a brick.
Wheresoever you place woman, sir — in what-
ever position or estate — she is an ornament to
the place she occupies, and a treasure to the
world. [Here Mr. Clemens paused, looked inquir-
ingly at his hearers, and remarked that the ap-
plause should come in at this point. It came in.
He resumed his eulogy.] Look at Cleopatra! —
look at Desdemona! — look at Florence Nightin-
gale! — look at Joan of Arc! — look at Lucretia
Borgia! [Disapprobation expressed.] Well [said
Mr. Clemens, scratching his head, doubtfully],
suppose we let Lucretia slide. Look at Joyce
Heth! — look at Mother Eve! You need not look
at her unless you want to, but [said Mr. Clemens,
reflectively, after a pause] Eve was ornamental,
sir — particularly before the fashions changed. I
repeat, sir, look at the illustrious names of history.
Look at the Widow Machree! — look at Lucy
Stone! — look at Elizabeth Cady Stanton! — look
at George Francis Train! And, sir, I say it with
bowed head and deepest veneration — look at the
mother of Washington! She raised a boy that
could not tell a lie — could not tell a lie! But he

io5'

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

never had any chance. It might have been dif-
ferent if he had belonged to the Washington
Newspaper Correspondents' Club.

I repeat, sir, that in whatever position you
place a woman she is an ornament to society and
a treasure to the world. As a sweetheart, she has
few equals and no superiors; as a cousin, she is
convenient; as a wealthy grandmother with an
incurable distemper, she is precious; as a wet-
nurse, she has no equal among men.

What, sir, would the people of the earth be
without woman? They would be scarce, sir, al-
mighty scarce. Then let us cherish her; let us
protect her; let us give her our support, our en-
couragement, our sympathy, ourselves — if we get
a chance.

But, jesting aside, Mr. President, woman is
lovable, gracious, kind of heart, beautiful —
worthy of all respect, of all esteem, of all defer-
ence. Not any here will refuse to drink her
health right cordially in this bumper of wine, for
each and every one has personally known, and
loved, and honored the very best one of them all —
his own mother.

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ADVICE TO GIRLS

In 1907 a young girl whom Mr. Clemens met on the
steamer Minnehaha called him "grandpa" and he
called her his granddaughter. She was attending
St. Timothys School, at Catonsville, Maryland, and
Mr. Clemens promised her to see her graduate. He
accordingly made the journey from New York on June
10, 1909, and delivered a short address.

I DON'T know what to tell you girls to do.
Mr. Martin has told you everything you ought
to do, and now I must give you some don'ts.

There are three things which come to my mind
which I consider excellent advice:

First, girls, don't smoke — that is, don't sqjoke
to excess. I am seventy-three and a half years
old, and have been smoking seventy-three of them.
But I never smoke to excess — that is, I smoke
in moderation, only one cigar at a time.

Second, don't drink — that is, don't drink to
excess.

Third, don't marry — I mean, to excess.

Honesty is the best policy. That is an old
proverb; but you don't want ever to forget it in
your journey through life.

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TAXES AND MORALS

Address Delivered in New York, January 22,

1906

At the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of
Tuskeegee Institute by Booker Washington, Mr. ChSate
presided, and in introducing Mr. Clemens made fun of
him because he made play his work, and that when he
worked hardest he did so lying in bed.

I CAME here in the responsible capacity of
policeman to watch Mr. Choate. This is an
occasion of grave and serious importance, and it
seems necessary for me to be present, so that if he
tried to work off any statement that required cor-
rection, reduction, refutation, or exposure, there
would be a tried friend of the public to protect
the house. He has not made one statement
whose veracity fails to tally exactly with my own
standard. I have never seen a person improve so.
This makes me thankful and proud of a country
that can produce such men — two such men.
And all in the same country. We can't be with
you always; we are passing away, and then — well,
everything will have to stop, I reckon. It is a

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sad thought. But in spirit I shall still be with
you. Choate, too — if he can.

Every born American among the eighty millions,
let his creed or destitution of creed be what it
may, is indisputably a Christian to this degree —
that his moral constitution is Christian.

There are two kinds of Christian morals, one
private and the other public. These two are so
distinct, so unrelated, that they are no more akin
to each other than are archangels and politicians.
During three hundred and sixty-three days in the
year the American citizen is true to his Christian
private morals, and keeps undefiled the nation's
character at its best and highest; then in the
other two days of the year he leaves his Christian
private morals at home and carries his Christian
public morals to the tax office and the polls, and
does the best he can to damage and undo his
whole year's faithful and righteous work. With-
out a blush he will vote for an unclean boss if
that boss is his party's Moses, without c ompute -
tjpn he will vote against the best man in the whole
land if he is on the other ticket. Every year in a
number of cities and States he helps put corrupt
men in office, whereas if he would but throw
away his Christian public morals, and carry his
Christian private morals to the polls, he could
promptly purify the public service and make the
possession of office a high and honorable dis-
tinction.

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Once a year he lays aside his Christian private
morals and hires a ferry-boat and piles up his
bonds in a warehouse in New Jersey for three
days, and gets out his Christian public morals
and goes to the tax office and holds up his hands
and swears he wishes he may never-never if he's
got a cent in the world, so help him. The next
day the list appears in the papers — a column and
a quarter of names, in fine print, and every man
in the list a billionaire and member of a couple of
churches. I know all those people. I have
friendly, social, and criminal relations with the
whole lot of them. They never miss a sermon
when they are so's to be around, and they never
miss swearing-off day, whether they are so's to
be around or not. J

I used to be an honest man. I am crumbling.
No — I have crumbled. When they assessed me
at $75,000 a fortnight ago I went out and tried
to borrow the money, and couldn't ; then when I
found they were letting a whole crop of million-
aires live in New York at a third of the price they
were charging me I was hurt, I was indignant,
and said: "This is the last feather. I am not
going to run this town all by myself." In that
moment — in that memorable moment — I began
to crumble. In fifteen minutes the disintegration
was complete. In fifteen minutes I had become
just a mere moral sand-pile; and I lifted up my
hand along with those seasoned and experienced

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TAXES AND MORALS

deacons and swore off every rag of personal prop-
erty I've got in the world, clear down to cork leg,
glass eye, and what is left of my wig.

Those tax officers were moved; they were pro-
foundly moved. They had long been accustomed
to seeing hardened old grafters act like that,
and they could endure the spectacle ; but they
were expecting better things of me, a char-
tered, professional moralist, and they were sad-
dened.

I fell visibly in their respect and esteem, and
I should have fallen in my own, except that I
had already struck bottom, and there wasn't any
place to fall to.

At Tuskeegee they will jump to misleading con-
clusions from insufficient evidence, along with
Doctor Parkhurst, and they will deceive the
student with the superstition that no gentleman
ever swears.

Look at those good millionaires; aren't they
gentlemen? Well, they swear. Only once in a
year, maybe, but there's enough bulk to it to
make up for the lost time. And do they lose any-
thing by it? No, they don't; they save enough
in three minutes to support the family seven
years. When they swear, do we shudder? No —
unless they say "damn!" Then we do. It
shrivels us all up. Yet we ought not to feel so
about it, because we all swear — everybody. In-
cluding the ladies. Including Doctor Parkhurst,

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

that strong and brave and excellent citizen, but
superficially educated.

For it is not the word that is the sin, it is the
spirit back of the word. When an irritated lady-
says " oh! " the spirit back of it is "damn! " and
that is the way it is going to be recorded against
her. It always makes me so sorry when I hear
a lady swear like that. But if she says "damn,"
and says it in an amiable, nice way, it isn't going
to be recorded at all.

The idea that no gentleman ever swears is all
wrong; he can swear and still be a gentleman if
he does it in a nice and benevolent and affectionate
way. The historian, John Fiske, whom I knew
well and loved, was a spotless and most noble
and upright Christian gentleman, and yet he swore
once. Not exactly that, maybe; still, he — but I
will tell you about it.

One day, when he was deeply immersed in his
work, his wife came in, much moved and profound-
ly distressed, and said: "I am sorry to disturb
you, John, but I must, for this is a serioiis matter,
and needs to be attended to at once."

Then, lamenting, she brought a grave accusation
against their little son. She said: "He has been
saying his Aunt Mary is a fool and his Aunt
Martha is a damned fool." Mr. Fiske reflected
upon the matter a minute, then said: "Oh, well,
it's about the distinction I should make between
them myself."

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Mr. Washington, I beg you to convey these
teachings to your great and prosperous and most
beneficent educational institution, and add them
to the prodigal mental and moral riches where-
with you equip your fortunate prot6g6s for the
struggle of Kfe.

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TAMMANY AND CROKER

Mr. Clemens made his debut as a campaign orator
on October 7, 1901, advocating the election of Seth
Low for Mayor, not as a Republican, but as a member
of the "Acorns" which he described as a "third party
having no political affiliation, but was concerned only
in the selection of the best candidates and the best
member. 19

GREAT BRITAIN had a Tammany and a
I Croker a good while ago. This Tammany
was in India, and it began its career with the
spread of the English dominion after the Battle
of Plassey. Its first boss was Clive, a sufficiently
crooked person sometimes, but straight as a yard-
stick when compared with the corkscrew crooked-
ness of the second boss, Warren Hastings.

That old-time Tammany was the East India
Company's government, and had its headquarters
at Calcutta. Ostensibly it consisted of a Great
Council of four persons, of whom one was the
Governor-General, Warren Hastings; really it
consisted of one person — Warren Hastings; for
by usurpation he concentrated all authority in
himself and governed the country like an autocrat.

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Ostensibly the Court of Directors, sitting in
London and representing the vast interests of the
stockholders, was supreme in authority over the
Calcutta Great Council, whose membership it ap-
pointed and removed at pleasure, whose policies
it dictated, and to whom it conveyed its will in
the form of sovereign commands; but whenever
it suited Hastings, he ignored even that august
body's authority and conducted the mighty af-
fairs of the British Empire in India to suit his own
notions.

At his mercy was the daily bread of every offi-
cial, every trader, every clerk, every civil servant,
big and little, in the whole huge India Company's
machine, and the man who hazarded his bread
by any failure of subserviency to the boss
lost it.

Now then, let the supreme masters of British
India, the giant corporation of the India Company
of London, stand for the voters of the city of New
York; let the Great Council of Calcutta stand for
Tammany; let the corrupt and money-grubbing
great hive of serfs which served under the Indian
Tammany's rod stand for New York Tammany's
serfs; let Warren Hastings stand for Richard
Croker, and it seems to me that the parallel is
exact and complete. And so let us be properly
grateful and thank God and our good luck that we
didn't invent Tammany.

Edmund Burke, regarded by many as the great-
"5

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

est orator of all times, conducted the case against
Warren Hastings in that renowned trial which
lasted years, and which promises to keep its re-
nown for centuries to come. I wish to quote
some of the things he said. I wish to imagine him
arrainging Mr. Croker and Tammany before the
voters Of New York City and pleading with them
for the overthrow of that combined iniquity of the
5th of November, and will substitute for "My
Lords," read "Fellow-Citizens"; for "Kingdom,"
read "City" 5 for "Parliamentary Process," read
"Political Campaign"; for "Two Houses," read
"Two Parties," and so it reads:

"Fellow- citizens, I must look upon it as an
auspicious circumstance to this cause, in which the
honor of the city is involved, that from the first
commencement of our political compaign to this
the hour of solemn trial not the smallest difference
of opinion has arisen between the two parties.

"You will see, in the progress of this cause, that
there is not only a long, connected, systematic
series of misdemeanors, but an equally connected
system of maxims and principles invented to
justify them. Upon both of these you must
judge.

"It is not only the interest of the city of New
York, now the most considerable part of the city
of the Americans, which is concerned, but the
credit and honor of the nation itself will be decided
by this decision."

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TAMMANY AND CROKER

At a later meeting of the Acorn Club, Mr. Clemens
said:

Tammany is dead, and there's no use in
blackguarding a corpse.

The election makes me think of a story of a
man who was dying. He had only two minutes
to live, so he sent for a clergyman and asked him,
-^Where is the best place to go to ?" He was un-
decided about it. So the minister told him
that each place had its advantages — heaven for
climate, and hell for society.

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MUNICIPAL CORRUPTION

Address at the City Club Dinner, January
4, 1 901

Bishop Potter told how an alleged representative of
Tammany Hall asked him in effect if he would cease his
warfare upon the Police Department if a certain cap-
tain and inspector were dismissed. He replied that he
would never be satisfied until the " man at the top" and
the "system" which permitted evils in the Police
Department were crushed.

THE Bishop has just spoken of a condition of
things which none of us can deny, and which
ought not to exist ; that is, the lust of gain — a lust
which does not stop short of the penitentiary or
the jail to accomplish its ends. But we may be
sure of one thing, and that is that this sort of
thing is not universal. If it were, this country
would not be. You may put this down as a
fact : that out of every fifty men, forty-nine are
clean. Then why is it, you may ask, that the
forty-nine don't have things the way they want
them? I'll tell you why it is. A good deal has been
said here to-night about what is to be accomplished
by organization. That's just the thing. It's be-

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cause the fiftieth fellow and his pals are organized
and the other forty-nine are not that the dirty
one rubs it into the clean fellows every time.

You may say organize, organize, organize; but
there may be so much organization that it will
interfere with the work to be done. The Bishop
here had an experience of that sort, and told all
about it down-town the other night. He was
painting a barn — it was his own barn — and yet
he was informed that his work must stop; he was
a non-union painter, and couldn't continue at that
sort of job.

Now, all these conditions of which you com-
plain should be remedied, and I am here to tell
you just how to do it. I've been a statesman
without salary for many years, and I have ac-
complished great and widespread good. I don't
know that it has benefited anybody very much,
even if it was good; but I do know that it hasn't
harmed me very much, and is hasn't made me
any richer.

We hold the balance of power. Put up your
best men for office, and we shall support the
better one. With the election of the best man
for Mayor would follow the selection of the best
man for Police Commissioner and Chief of Police.

My first lesson in the craft of statesmanship
was taken at an early age. Fifty-one years ago
I was fourteen years old, and we had a society
in the town I lived in, patterned after the Free-

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masons, or the Ancient Order of United Farmers,
or some such thing — just what it was patterned
after doesn't matter. It had an inside guard and
an outside guard, and a past-grand warden, and
a lot of such things, so as to give dignity to the
organization and offices to the members.

Generally speaking it was a pretty good sort of
organization, and some of the very best boys in
the village, including — but I mustn't get personal
on an occasion like this — and the society would
have got along pretty well had it not been for
the fact that there were a certain number of the
members who could be bought. They got to be
an infernal nuisance. Every time we had an
election the candidates had to go around and see
the purchasable members. The price per vote
was paid in doughnuts, and it depended somewhat
on the appetites of the individuals as to the price
of the votes.

This thing ran along until some of us, the really
very best boys in the organization, decided that
these corrupt practices must stop, and for the
purpose of stopping them we organized a third
party. We had a name, but we were never known
by that name. Those who didn't like us called
us the Anti-Doughnut party, but we didn't mind
that.

We said: "Call us what you please; the name
doesn't matter. We are organized for a prin-
ciple." By-and-by the election came around, and

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we made a big mistake. We were triumphantly
beaten. That taught us a lesson. Then and
there we decided never again to nominate any-
body for anything. We decided simply to force
the other two parties in the society to nominate
their very best men. Although we were or-
ganized for a principle, we didn't care much about
that. Principles aren't x>f much account any-
way, except at election -time. After that you
hang them up to let them season.

The next time we had an election we told both
the other parties that we'd beat any candidates
put up by any one of them of whom we didn't
approve. In that election we did business. We
got the man we wanted. I suppose they called
us the Anti-Doughnut party because they couldn't
buy us with their doughnuts. They didn't have
enough of them. Most reformers arrive at their
price sooner or later, and I suppose we would
have had our price; but our opponents weren't
offering anything but doughnuts, and those we
spurned.

Now it seems to me that an Anti-Doughnut
party is just what is wanted in the present emer-
gency. I would have the Anti-Doughnuts felt in
every city and hamlet and school district in this
State and in the United States. I was an Anti-
Doughnut in my boyhood, and I'm an Anti-
Doughnut still. The modern designation is Mug-
wump. There used to be quite a number of us

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Mugwumps, but I think I'm the only one left.
I had a vote this fall, and I began to make some
inquiries as to what I had better do with it.

I don't know anything about finance, and I
never did, but I know some pretty shrewd finan-
ciers, and they told me that Mr. Bryan wasn't
safe on any financial question. I said to myself,
then, that it wouldn't do for me to vote for Bryan,
and I rather thought — I know now — that McKin-
ley wasn't just right on this Philippine question,
and so I just didn't vote for anybody. I've got
that vote yet, and I've kept it clean, ready to
deposit at some other election. It wasn't cast
for any wildcat financial theories, and it wasn't
cast to support the man who sends our boys as
volunteers out into the Philippines to get shot
down under a polluted flag.

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MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT

Address at thb Annual Dinner op the St. Nicho-
las Society, New York, December 6, 1900

Doctor Mackay, in his response to the toast " St. Nicho-
las," referred to Mr. Clemens, saying: " Mark Twain is as
true a preacher of true righteousness as any bishop, priest,
or minister of any church to-day, because he moves men
to forget their faults by cheerful well-doing instead of
making them sour and morbid by everlastingly bending
their attention to the seamy and sober side of life.* 9

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN OF
THE ST. NICHOLAS SOCIETY,— These
are, indeed, prosperous days for me. Night be-
fore last, in a speech, the Bishop of the Diocese
of New York complimented me for my contribu-
tion to theology, and to-night the Reverend Doc-
tor Mackay has elected me to the ministry. I
thanked Bishop Potter then for his compliment,
and I thank Doctor Mackay now for that promo-
tion. I think that both have discerned in me
what I long ago discerned, but what I was afraid
the world would never learn to recognize.

In this absence of nine years I find a great im-
provement in the city of New York. I am glad
to speak on that as a toast — "The City of New

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York." Some say it has improved because I
have been away. Others, and I agree with them,
say it has improved because I have come back.
We must judge of a city, as of a man, by its ex-
ternal appearances and by its inward character.
In externals the foreigner coming to these shores
is more impressed at first by our sky-scrapers.
They are new to him. He has not done anything
of the sort since he built the tower of Babel. The
foreigner is shocked by them.

In the daylight they are ugly. They are — well,
too chimneyfied and too snaggy — like a mouth
that needs attention from a dentist; like a ceme-
tery that is all monuments and no gravestones.
But at night, seen from the river where they are
columns towering against the sky, all sparkling
with light, they are fairylike; they are beauty
more satisfactory to the soul and more enchant-
ing than anything that man has dreamed of since
the Arabian nights. We can't always have the
beautiful aspect of things. Let us make the
most of our sights that are beautiful and let the
others go. When your foreigner makes disagree-
able comments on New York by daylight, float
him down the river at night.

What has made these sky-scrapers possible is
the elevator. The cigar-box which the European
calls a "lift" needs but to be compared with our
elevators to be appreciated. The lift stops to re-
flect between floors. That is all right in a hearse,

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but not in elevators. The American elevator acts
like the man's patent purge — it worked. As the
inventor said, "This purge doesn't waste any
time fooling around; it attends strictly to busi-
ness/ '

That New-Yorkers have the cleanest, quickest,
and most admirable system of street railways in
the world has been forced upon you by the
abnormal appreciation you have of your hack-
man. We ought always to be grateful to him
for that service. Nobody else would have brought
such a system into existence for us. We ought
to build him a monument. We owe him one as
much as we owe one to anybody. Let it be a
tall one. Nothing permanent, of course; build it
of plaster, say. Then gaze at it and realize how
grateful we are — for the time being — and then
pull it down and throw it on the ash-heap. That's
the way to honor your public heroes.

As to our streets, I find them cleaner than they
used to be. I miss those dear old landmarks, the
symmetrical mountain ranges of dust and dirt
that used to be piled up along the streets for the
wind and rain to tear down at their pleasure.
Yes, New York is cleaner than Bombay. I realize
that I have been in Bombay, that I now am in
New York; that it is not my duty to flatter
Bombay, but rather to flatter New York.

Compared with the wretched attempts of Lon-
don to light that city, New York may fairly be

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

said to be a well-lighted city. Why, London's
attempt at good lighting is almost as bad as Lon-
don's attempt at rapid transit. There is just one
good system of rapid transit in London — the
"Tube," and that, of course, had been put in by
Americans. Perhaps, after a while, those Ameri-
cans will come back and give New York also a
good underground system. Perhaps they have
already begun. I have been so busy since I came
back that I haven't had time as yet to go down
cellar.

But it is by the laws of the city, it is by the
manners of the city, it is by the ideals of the city,
it is by the customs of the city and by the munici-
pal government which all these elements correct,
support, and foster, by which the foreigner judges
the city. It is by these that he realizes that
New York may, indeed, hold her head high among
the cities of the world. It is by these standards
that he knows whether to class the city higher or
lower than the other municipalities of the world.

Gentlemen, you have the best municipal gov-
ernment in the world — the purest and the most
fragrant. /The very angels envy you, and wish
they coujld establish a government like it in
heaven. /You got it by a noble fidelity to civic
duty. You got it by stern and ever - watchful
exertion of the great powers with which you are
charged by the rights which were handed down
to you by your forefathers, by your manly re-

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fusal to let base men invade the high places of
your government, and by instant retaliation when
any public officer has insulted you in the city's
name by swerving in the slightest from the up-
right and full performance of his duty. It is you
who have m^de this city the envy of the cities of
the world..' God will bless you for it — God will
bless you for it. Why, when you approach the V
final resting-place the angels of heaven will
gather at the gates and cry out:

"Here they come! Show them to the arch-
angel's box, and turn the lime-light on them!"/

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CHINA AND THE PHILIPPINES

At a Dinner Given in the Waldorf-Astoria
Hotel, December, 1900

Winston Spencer Churchill was introduced by Mr.
Clemens.

FOR years I've been a self-appointed mission-
ary to bring about the union of America
and the motherland. They ought to be united.
Behold America, the refuge of the oppressed from
everywhere (who can pay fifty dollars' admission)
— any one except a Chinaman — standing up for
human rights everywhere, even helping China
let people in free when she wants to collect fifty
dollars upon them. And how unselfishly England
has wrought for the open door for all! And how
piously America has wrought for that open door
in all cases where it was not her own!

Yes, as a missionary I've sung my songs of
praise. And yet I think that England sinned
when she got herself into a war in South Africa
which she could have avoided, just as we sinned
in getting into a similar war in the Philippines.
Mr. Churchill, by his father, is an Englishman;

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by his mother he is an American — no doubt a
blend that makes the perfect man. England and
America; yes, we are kin. And now that we are
also kin in sin, there is nothing more to be de-
sired. The harmony is complete, the blend is per-
fect.

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THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL
MORALS

The New Vagabonds Club of London, made up of
the leading younger literary men of the day, gave a
dinner in honor of Mr. and Mrs. Clemens, July
8, 1899.

IT has always been difficult — leave that word
difficult — not exceedingly difficult, but just
difficult, nothing more than that, not the slightest
shade to add to that — just difficult — to respond
properly, in the right phraseology, when compli-
ments are paid to me ; but it is more than difficult
when the compliments are paid to a better than
I — my wife.

And while I am not here to testify against
myself — I can't be expected to do so, a prisoner
in your own country is not admitted to do so —
as to which member of the family wrote my books,
I could say in general that really I wrote the
books myself. My wife puts the facts in, and they
make it respectable. My modesty won't suffer
while compliments are being paid to literature,
and through literature to my family. I can't get
enough of them.

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I am curiously situated tonight. It so rarely
happens that I am introduced by a humorist;
I am generally introduced by a person of grave
walk and carriage. That makes the proper back-
ground of gravity for brightness. I am going
to alter to suit, and haply I may say some humor-
ous things.

(When you start with a blaze of sunshine and J
upburst of humor, when you begin with that, the
proper office of humor is to reflect, to put you into
that pensive mood of deep thought, to make you
think of your sins, if you wish half an hour to
fly. Humor makes me reflect now to-night, it
sets the thinking machinery, in motion. Always,
when I am thinking, there come suggestions of
what I am, and what we all are, and what we are
coming to. A sermon comes from my lips always
when I listen to a humorous speech.)

I seize the opportunity to throw away frivolities,
to say something to plant the seed, and make all
better than when I came. In Mr. Grossmith's
remarks there was a subtle something suggesting
my favorite theory of the difference between
theoretical morals and practical morals. I try
to instil practical morals in the place of theatrical
— I mean theoretical; but as an addendum — an
annex — something added to theoretical morals.

When your chairman said it was the first time
he had ever taken the chair, he did not mean
that he had not taken lots of other things; he

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attended my first lecture and took notes. This
indicated the man's disposition. There was noth-
ing else flying round, so he took notes; he would
have taken anything he could get.

I can bring a moral to bear here which shows
the difference between theoretical morals and
practical morals. Theoretical morals are the sort
you get on your mother's knee, in good books, and
from the pulpit. You gather them in your head,
and not in your heart; they are theory without
practice. Without the assistance of practice to
perfect them, it is difficult to teach a child to
Jibe honest, don't steal."

/ I will teach you how it should be done, lead you

into temptation, teach you how to steal, so that

j you may recognize when you have stolen and feel

^ the proper pangs. It is no good going round and

bragging you have never taken the chair.

As by the fires of experience, so by commission
of crime, you learn real morals. Commit all the
crimes, familiarize yourself with all sins, take
them in rotation (there are only two or three
thousand of them), stick to it, commit two or
three every day, and by-and-by you will be proof
against them. When you are through you will
be proof against all sins and morally perfect.
You will be vaccinated against every possible
commission of them. This is the only way.

I will read you a written statement upon the
subject that I wrote three years ago to read to

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the Sabbath-schools. [Here the lecturer turned
his pockets out, but without success.] No ! I have
left it at home. Still, it was a mere statement
of fact, illustrating the value of practical morals
produced by the commission of crime.

It was in my boyhood — just a statement of
fact, reading is only more formal, merely facts,
merely pathetic facts, which I can state so as to
be understood. It relates to the first time I ever
stole a watermelon; that is, I think it was the
first time; anyway, it was right along there
somewhere.

I stole it out of a farmer's wagon while he was
waiting on another customer. "Stole" is a harsh
term. I withdrew — I retired that watermelon.
I carried it to a secluded corner of a lumber-yard.
I broke it open. It was green — the greenest
watermelon raised in the valley that year.

The minute I saw it was green I was sorry, and
began to reflect — reflection is the beginning of
reform. If you don't reflect when you commit a
crime then that crime is of no use; it might just
as well have been committed by some one else.
You must reflect or the value is lost; you are not
vaccinated against committing it again.

I began to reflect. I said to myself: "What
ought a boy to do who has stolen a green water-
melon ? What would George Washington do, the
father of his country, the only American who
could not tell a lie? What would he do? There
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is only one right, high, noble thing for any boy
to do who has stolen a watermelon of that class :
he must make restitution; he must restore that
stolen property to its rightful owner." I said I
would do it when I made that good resolution. I
felt it to be a noble, uplifting obligation. I rose
up spiritually stronger and refreshed. I carried
that watermelon back — what was left of it — and
restored it to the farmer, and made him give me
i^a ripe one in its place.

Now you see that this constant impact of crime
upon crime protects you against further com-
mission of crime. It builds you up. A man
can't become morally perfect by stealing one or
a thousand green watermelons, but every little
helps.

I was at a great school yesterday (St. Paul's),
where for four hundred years they have been
busy with brains, and building up England by
producing Pepys, Miltons, and Marlboroughs.
Six hundred boys left to nothing in the world but
theoretical morality. I wanted to become the
professor of practical morality, but the high mas-
ter was away, so I suppose I shall have to go on
making my living the same old way— by adding
practical to theoretical morality.

What are the glory that was Greece, the gran-
a5 deur that was Rome, compared to the glory and
grandeur and majesty of a perfected morality

such as you see before you?

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The New Vagabonds are old vagabonds (under-
going the old sort of reform). You drank my
health; I hope I have not been unuseful. Take
this system of morality to your hearts. Take it
home to your neighbors and your graves, and I
hope that it will be a long time before you arrive
there.

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LAYMAN'S SERMON

The Young Meris Christian Association asked Mr.
Clemens to deliver a lay sermon at the Majestic Thea-
tre, New York, March 4, 1906. More than five thou-
sand young men tried to get into the theatre, and in
a short time traffic was practically stopped in the ad-
jacent streets. The police reserves had to be called out
to thin the crowd. Doctor Fagnani had said something
before about the police episode, and Mr. Clemens took
it up.

I HAVE have been listening to what was said
here, and there is in it a lesson of citizenship.
You created the police, and you are responsible for
them. One must pause, therefore, before criticis-
ing them too harshly. They are citizens, just
as we are. A little of citizenship ought to be
taught at the mother's knee and in the nursery.
Citizenship is what makes a republic; monarchies
can get along without it. What keeps a republic
on its legs is good citizenship.

Organization is necessary in all things. It is
even necessary in reform. I was an organization
myself once — for twelve hours. I was in Chicago
a few years ago about to depart for New York.
There were with me Mr. Osgood, a publisher, and

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a stenographer. I picked out a state-room on a
train, the principal feature of which was that it
contained the privilege of smoking. The train had
started but a short time when the conductor came
in and said that there had been a mistake made,
and asked that we vacate the apartment. I refus-
ed, but when I went out on the platform Osgood
and the stenographer agreed to accept a section.
They were too modest.

Now, I am not modest. I was born modest, but
it didn't last. I asserted myself, insisted upon
my rights, and finally the Pullman conductor and
the train conductor capitulated, and I was left in
possession.

I went into the dining - car the next morning
for breakfast. Ordinarily I only care for coffee
and rolls, but this particular morning I espied an
important-looking man on the other side of the
car eating broiled chicken. I asked for broiled
chicken, and I was told by the waiter and later
by the dining-car conductor that there was no
broiled chicken. There must have been an argu-
ment, for the Pullman conductor came in and
remarked: "If he wants broiled chicken, give it
to him. If you haven't got it on the train, stop
somewhere. It will be better for all concerned!"
I got the chicken.

It is from experiences such as these that you
get your education of life, and you string them
into jewels or into tinware, as you may choose. I

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have received recently several letters asking my
counsel or advice. The principal request is for
some incident that may prove helpful to the
young. There were a lot of incidents in my career
to help me along — sometimes they helped me
along faster than I wanted to go.

Here is such a request. It is a telegram from
Joplin, Missouri, and it reads: "In what one of
your works can we find the definition of a gentle-
man?"

I have not answered that telegram, either; I
couldn't. It seems to me that if any man has
just merciful and kindly instincts he would be a
gentleman, for he would need nothing else in the
world.

I received the other day a letter from my old
friend, William Dean Howells — Howells, the head
of American literature. No one is able to stand
with him. He is an old, old friend of mine, and
he writes me, "To-morrow I shall be sixty-nine
years old." Why, I am surprised at Howells
writing that! I have known him longer than
that. I'm sorry to see a man trying to appear so
young. Let's see. Howells says now, "I see
you have been burying Patrick. I suppose he
was old, too."

No, he was never old — Patrick. He came to
us thirty-six years ago. He was my coachman
on the morning that I drove my young bride to
our new home. He was a young Irishman, slen-

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der, tall, lithe, honest, truthful, and he never
changed in all his life. He really was with us but
twenty-five years, for he did not go with us to
Europe, but he never regarded that as separation.
As the children grew up he was their guide. He
was all honor, honesty, and affection. He was
with us in New Hampshire, with us last summer,
and his hair was just as black, his eyes were just
as blue, his form just as straight, and his heart
just as good as on the day we first met. In all
the long years Patrick never made a mistake. He
never needed an order, he never received a com-
mand. He knew. I have been asked for my idea
of an ideal gentleman, and I give it to you —
Patrick McAleer.

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UNIVERSITY SETTLEMENT SOCIETY

After the serious addresses were made, Seth Low
introduced Mr. Clemens at the Settlement House,
February 2, igoi.

THE older we grow the greater becomes our
wonder at how much ignorance one can con-
tain without bursting one's clothes. Ten days ago
I did not know anything about the University
Settlement except what I'd read in the pamphlets
sent me. Now, after being here and hearing
Mrs. Hewitt and Mrs. Thomas, it seems to me I
know of nothing like it at all. It's a charity that
carries no humiliation with it. Marvellous it is,
to think of schools where you don't have to drive
the children in but drive them out. It was not
so in my day.

Down-stairs just now I saw a dancing lesson
going on. You must pay a cent for a lesson.
You can't get it for nothing. That's the reason I
never learned to dance.

But it was the pawnbroker's shop you have
here that interested me mightily. I've known
something about pawnbrokers' shops in my time,

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but here you have a wonderful plan. The ordi-
nary pawnbroker charges thirty - six per cent, a
year for a loan, and I've paid more myself, but
here a man or woman in distress can obtain a loan
for one per cent, a month ! It's wonderful !

I've been interested in all I've heard to-day,
especially in the romances recounted by Mrs.
Thomas, which reminds me that I have a romance
of my own in my autobiography, which I am
building for the instruction of the world.

In San Francisco, many years ago, when I was
a newspaper reporter (perhaps I should say I had
been and was willing to be), a pawnbroker was
taking care of what property I had. There was
a friend of mine, a poet, out of a job, and he was
having a hard time of it, too. There was passage
in it, but I guess I've got to keep that for the auto-
biography.

Well, my friend the poet thought his life was a
failure, and I told him I thought it was, and then
he said he thought he ought to commit suicide,
and I said "all right," which was disinterested
advice to a friend in trouble; but, like all such
advice, there was just a little bit of self-interest
back of it, for if I could get a "scoop " on the other
newspapers I could get a job.

The poet could be spared, and so, largely for
his own good and partly for mine, I kept the
thing in his mind, which was necessary, as would-
be suicides are very changeable and hard to hold

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to their purpose. He had a preference for a pistol,
which was an extravagance, for we hadn't enough
between us to hire a pistol. A fork would have
been easier.

And so he concluded to drown himself, and I
said it was an excellent idea — the only trouble
being that he was so good a swimmer. So we
went down to the beach. I went along to see that
the thing was done right. Then something most
romantic happened. There came in on the sea
something that had been on its way for three
years. It rolled in across the broad Pacific with
a message that was full of meaning to that poor
poet and cast itself at his feet. It was a life-pre-
server! This was a complication. And then I had
an idea — he never had any, especially when he was
going to write poetry; I suggested that we pawn
the life-preserver and get a revolver.

The pawnbroker gave us an old derringer with
a bullet as big as a hickory nut. When he heard
that it was only a poet that was going to kill him-
self he did not quibble. Well, we succeeded in
sending a bullet right through his head. It was
a terrible moment when he placed that pistol
against his forehead and stood for an instant. I
said, "Oh, pull the trigger !" and he did, and
cleaned out all the gray matter in his brains. It
carried the poetic faculty away, and now he's a
useful member of society.

Now, therefore, I realize that there's no more
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beneficent institution than this penny fund of
yours, and I want all the poets to know this. I
did think about writing you a check, but now I
think I'll send you a few copies of what one of
your little members called Strawberry Finn.

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PUBLIC EDUCATION ASSOCIATION

Address at a Meeting op the Berkeley Lyceum,
New York, November 23, 1900

I DON'T suppose that I am called here as an
expert on education, for that would show a
lack of foresight on your part and a deliberate
intention to remind me of my shortcomings.

As I sat here looking around for an idea it
struck me that I was called for two reasons. One
was to do good to me, a poor unfortunate traveller
on the world's wide ocean, by giving me a knowl-
edge of the nature and scope of your society and
letting me know that others beside myself have
been of some use in the world. The other reason
that I can see is that you have called me to show
by way of contrast what education can accomplish
if administered in the right sort of doses.

Your worthy president said that the school
pictures, which have received the admiration of
the world at the Paris Exposition, have been
sent to Russia, and this was a compliment from
that Government — which is very surprising to
me. Why, it is only an hour since I read a cable-
gram in the newspapers beginning "Russia Pro-

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PUBLIC EDUCATION

poses to Retrench." I was not expecting such
a thunderbolt, and I thought what a happy thing
it will be for Russians when the retrenchment
will bring home the thirty thousand Russian
troops now in Manchuria, to live in peaceful pur-
suits. I thought this was what Germany should
do also without delay, and that Prance and all
the other nations in China should follow suit.

Why should not China be free from the foreign-
ers, who are only making trouble on her soil ? If
they would only all go home, what a pleasant
place China would be for the Chinese! We do
not allow Chinamen to come here, and I say in all
seriousness that it would be a graceful thing to
let China decide who shall go there.

China never wanted foreigners any more than
foreigners wanted Chinamen, and on this question
I am with the Boxers every time. The Boxer is a
patriot. He loves his country better than he does
the countries of other people. I wish him suc-
cess. The Boxer believes in driving us out of his
country. I am a Boxer too, for I believe in driv-
ing him out of our country.

When I read the Russian despatch further my
dream of world peace vanished. It said that the
vast expense of maintaining the army had made
it necessary to retrench, and so the Government
had decided that to support the army it would be
necessary to withdraw the appropriation from the
public schools. This is a monstrous idea to us.

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We believe that out of the public school grows the
greatness of a nation.

It is curious to reflect how history repeats itself
the world over. Why, I remember the same
thing was done when I was a boy on the Mississippi
River. There was a proposition in a township
there to discontinue public schools because they
were too expensive. An old farmer spoke up and
said if they stopped the schools they would not
save anything, because every time a school was
closed a jail had to be built.

It's like feeding a dog on his own tail. He'll
never get fat. I believe it is better to support
schools than jails.

The work of your association is better and
shows more wisdom than the Czar of Russia and
all his people. This is not much of a compliment,
but it's the best I've got in stock.

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EDUCATION AND CITIZENSHIP

On the evening of May 14, 1908, the alumni of the
College of the City of New York celebrated the opening
of the new college buildings at a banquet in the Waldorf-
Astoria. Mr. Clemens followed Mayor McClellan.

(AGREED when the Mayor said that there
was not a man within hearing who did not
agree that citizenship should be placed above
everything else, even learning.

Have you ever thought about this? Is there
a college in the whole country where there is a
chair of good citizenship? There is a kind of
bad citizenship which is taught in the schools, but
no real good citizenship taught. There are some
which teach insane citizenship, bastard citizen-
ship, but that is all. Patriotism! Yes; but
patriotis m is usually the refuge of the scoundrel.
He is the man who talks the Toudest.

You can begin that chair of citizenship in the
College of the City of New York. You can place
it above mathematics and literature, and that is
/where it belongs.

We used to trust in God. I think it was in
1863 that some genius suggested that it be put

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upon the gold and silver coins which circulated
among the rich. They didn't put it on the nickels
and coppers because they didn't think the poor
folks had any trust in God. /

Good citizenship would teach accuracy of think-
ing and accuracy of statement. Now, that motto
on the coin is an overstatement. Those Congress-
men had no right to commit this whole country
to a theological doctrine. But since they did,
Congress ought to state what our creed should be.
/ There was never a nation in the world that put
its whole trust in God. It is a statement made
on insufficient evidence. Leaving out the gamblers,
the burglars, and the plumbers, perhaps we do
put our trust in God after a fashion. But, after
all, it is an overstatement,/

If the cholera or black plague should come to
these shores, perhaps the bulk of the nation
would pray to be delivered from it, but the rest
would put their trust in the Health Board of the
City of New York.

I read in the papers within the last day or two
of a poor young girl who they said was a leper.
Did the people in that populous section of the
country where she was — did they put their trust
in God ? The girl was afflicted with the leprosy,
a disease which cannot be communicated from
one person to another.

, Yet, instead of putting their trust in God, they
'harried that poor creature, shelterless and friend-

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less, from place to place, exactly as they did in
the Middle Ages, when they made lepers wear
bells, so that people could be warned of their
approach and avoid them. Perhaps those peo-
ple in the Middle £ges thought they were putting
their trust in God.

The President ordered the removal of that motto
from the coin, and I thought that it was well. I
thought that overstatement should not stay there.
{jBut I think it would better read, " Within certain
judicious limitations we trust in God," and if
there isn't enough room on the coin for this, why,
enlarge the coi^.

Now I want to tell a story about jumping at
conclusions. It was told to me by Bram Stoker,
and it concerns a christening. There was a little
clergyman who was prone to jump at conclusions
sometimes. One day he was invited to officiate at
a christening. He went. There sat the relatives —
intelligent-looking relatives they were. The little
clergyman's instinct came to him to make a great
speech. He was given to flights of oratory that
way — a very dangerous thing, for often the wings
which take one into clouds of oratorical enthusiasm
are wax and melt up there, and down you come.

But the little clergyman couldn't resist. He
took the child in his arms, and, holding it, looked
at it a moment. It wasn't much of a child. It
was little, like a sweet -potato. Then the little
clergyman waited impressively, and then: "I see
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ia your countenances," he said, "disappointment
of him. I see you are disappointed with this baby.
Why? Because he is so little. My friends, if you
had but the power of looking into the future you
might see that great things may come of little
things. There is the great ocean, holding the nav-
ies of the world, which comes from little drops
of water no larger than a woman's tears. There
are the great constellations in the sky, made up
of little bits of stars. Oh z if you could consider his
future you might see that he might become the
greatest poet of the universe, the greatest warrior
the world has ever known, greater than Caesar,
than Hannibal, than — er — er" (turning to the
father) — "what's his name?"
The father hesitated, then whispered back:
His name? Well, his name is Mary Ann."

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COURAGE

At a beefsteak dinner, given by artists, caricaturists,
and humorists of New York City, April 18, 1908, Mr.
Clemens, Mr. H. H. Rogers, and Mr. Patrick McCar-
ren were the guests of honor. Each wore a white apron,
and each made a short speech.

IN the matter of courage we all have our limits.
There never was a hero who did not have his
bounds. I suppose it may be said of Nelson and
all the others whose courage hats been advertised
that there came times in their lives when their
bravery knew it had come to its limit.

I have found mine a good many times. Some-
times this was expected — often it was unexpected.
I know a man who is not afraid to sleep with a
rattlesnake, but you could not get him to sleep
with a safety-razor.

I never had the courage to talk across a long,
narrow room I should be at the end "of the room
facing all the audience. If I attempt to talk
across a room I find myself turning this way and
that, and thus at alternate periods I have part
of the audience behind me. You ought never to
have any part of the audience behind you; you
never can tell what they are going to do.

I'll sit down.

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THE DINNER TO MR. CHOATE

At a Dinner Given in Honor op Ambassador

Joseph H. Choate at the Lotos Club,

November 24, 1901

The speakers, among others, were: Senator Depew,
William Henry White, Speaker Thomas Reed, and
Mr. Choate. Mr. Clemens spoke, in part, as follows:

THE greatness of this country rests on two
anecdotes. The first one is that of Wash-
ington and his hatchet, representing the founda-
tion of true speaking, which is the characteristic
of our people. The second one is an old one, and
I've been waiting to hear it to-night; but as no-
body has told it yet, I will tell it.

You've heard it before, and you'll hear it many,
many times more. It is an anecdote of our guest,
of the time when he was engaged as a young man
with a gentle Hebrew, in the process of skinning
the client. The main part in that business is the
collection of the bill for services in skinning the
man. "Services" is the term used in that craft
for the operation of that kind — diplomatic in its
nature.

Choate's — co-respondent — made out a bill for
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$500 for his services, so called. But Choate told
him he had better leave the matter to him, and
the next day he collected the bill for the services
and handed the Hebrew $5000, saying, "That's
your half of the loot," and inducing that memo-
'rable response: "Almost thou persuadest me to
be a Christian "

The deep-thinkers didn't merely laugh when
that happened. They stopped to think, and said :
"There's a rising man. He must be rescued from
the law and consecrated to diplomacy. The com-
mercial advantages of a great nation lie there in
that man's keeping. We no longer require a man
to take care of our moral character before the
world. Washington and his anecdote have done
that. We require a man to take care of our com-
mercial prosperity."

Mr. Choate has carried that trait with him, and,
as Mr. Carnegie has said, he has worked like a
mole underground.

We see the result when American railroad iron
is sold so cheap in England that the poorest
family can have it. He has so beguiled that
Cabinet of England.

He has been spreading the commerce of this
nation, and has depressed English commerce in
the same ratio. This was the principle underlying
that anecdote, and the wise men saw it ; the prin-
ciple of give and take — give one and take ten—
the principle of diplomacy,

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ON STANLEY AND LIVINGSTONE

Mr, Clemens was entertained at dinner by the Whiie-
friars' Club, London, at the Mitre Tavern, on the even-
ing of August 6, 1872. In reply to the toast in his
honor he said:

GENTLEMEN,— I thank you very heartily in-
deed for this expression of kindness toward
me. What I have done for England and civili-
zation in the arduous affairs which I have engaged
in (that is good: that is so smooth that I will say
it again and again) — what I have done for
England and civilization in the arduous part I
have performed I have done with a single-hearted
devotion and with no hope of reward. I am
proud, I am very proud, that it was reserved for
me to find Doctor Livingstone and for Mr. Stanley
to get all the credit. I hunted for that man in
Africa all over seventy-five or one hundred
parishes, thousands and thousands of miles in
the wilds and deserts all over the place, some-
times riding negroes and sometimes travelling by
rail. I didn't mind the rail or anything else, so
that I didn't come in for the tar and feathers.
I found that man at Ujiji — a place you may

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ON STANLEY AND LIVINGSTONE

remember if you have ever been there — and it was
a very great satisfaction that I found him just in
the nick of time. I found that poor old man
deserted by his niggers and by his geographers,
deserted by all of his kind except the gorillas —
dejected, miserable, famishing, absolutely famish-
ing — but he was eloquent. Just as I found him
he had eaten his last elephant, and he said to
me: "God knows where I shall get another."
He had nothing to wear except his venerable
and honorable naval suit, and nothing to eat but
his diary.

But I said to him: "It is all right; I have dis-
covered you, and Stanley will be here by the
four-o'clock train and will discover you officially,
and then we will turn to and have a reglar good
time/' I said: "Cheer up, for Stanley has got
corn, ammunition, glass beads, hymn-books,
whiskey, and everything which the human heart
can desire; he has got all kinds of valuables, in-
cluding telegraph-poles and a few cart-loads of
money. J By this time communication has been
made with the land of Bibles and civilization,
and property will advance/' And then we sur-
veyed all that country, from Ujiji, through Un-
anogo and other places, to Unyanyembe. I
mention these names simply for your edification,
nothing more — do not expect it — particularly as
intelligence to the Royal Geographical Society.
And then, having filled up the old man, we were

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all too full for utterance and departed. We have
since then feasted on honors.

Stanley has received a snuff-box and I have
received considerable snuff; he has got to write a
book and gather in the rest of the credit, and I
am going to levy on the copyright and to collect
the money. Nothing comes amiss to me — cash
or credit; but, seriously, I do feel that Stanley is
the chief man and an illustrious one, and I do
applaud him with all my heart. Whether he is
an American or a Welshman by birth, or one, or
both, matters not to me. So far as I am person-
ally concerned, I am simply here to stay a few
months, and to see English people and to learn
English manners and customs, and to enjoy my-
self; so the simplest thing I can do is to thank you
for the toast you have honored me with and for
the remarks you have made, and to wish health
and prosperity to the Whitefriars , Club, and to
sink down to my accustomed level.

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HENRY M. STANLEY

Address Delivered in Boston, November, 1886
Mr. Clemens introduced Mr. Stanley.

TADIES AND GENTLEMEN, if any should
I— * ask, Why is it that you are here as intro-
ducer of the lecturer? I should answer that I
happened to be around and was asked to perform
this function. I was quite willing to do so, and, as
there was no sort of need of an introduction, any-
way, it could be necessary only that some person
come forward for a moment and do an unnecessary
thing, and this is quite in my line. Now, to in-
troduce so illustrious a name as Henry M. Stanley
by any detail of what the man has done is clear
aside from my purpose; that would be stretching
the unnecessary to an unconscionable degree.
When I contrast what I have achieved in my
measurably brief life with what he has achieved
in his possibly briefer one, the effect is to sweep
utterly away the ten-story edifice of my own self-
appreciation and leave nothing behind but the
cellar. When you compare these achievements of
his with the achievements of really great men who

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exist in history, the comparison, I believe, is in
his favor. I am not here to disparage Columbus.

£Io, I won't do that; but when you come to
regard the achievements of these two men, Colum-
. bus and Stanley, from the standpoint of the dif-
ficulties they encountered, the advantage is with
Stanley and against Columbus. Now, Columbus
started out to discover America. Well, he didn't
need to do anything at all but sit in the cabin of
his ship and hold his grip and sail straight on, and
America would discover itself. Here it was, bar-
ring his passage the whole length and breadth
of the South American continent, and he couldn't
get by it. He'd got to discover it. But Stanley
started out to find Doctor Livingstone, who was
scattered abroad, as you may say, over the length
and breadth of a vast slab of Africa as big as
the United States.

It was a blind kind of search. He was the
worst scattered of men. But I will throw the
weight of this introduction upon one very pecul-
iar feature of Mr. Stanley's character, and that is
his indestructible Americanism — an Americanism
which he is proud of. And in this day and time,
when it is the custom to ape and imitate English
methods and fashion, it is like a breath of fresh
air to stand in the presence of this untainted
American citizen who has been caressed and com-
plimented by half of the crowned heads of Europe,
who could clothe his body from his head to his

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HENRY M. STANLEY

heels with the orders and decorations lavished
upon him. And yet, when the untitled myriads
of his own country put out their hands in wel-
come to him and greet him, " Well done/'
through the Congress of the United States, that is
the crown that is worth all the rest to him. He
is a product of institutions which exist in no
other country on earth — institutions that bring
out all that is best and most heroic in a man. I
introduce Henry M. Stanley.

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DINNER TO MR. JEROME

A dinner to express their confidence in the integrity
and good judgment of District -Attorney Jerome was
given at Delmonico's by over three hundred of his
admirers on the evening of May 7, 1909.

INDEED, that is very sudden. I was not in-
formed that the verdict was going to depend
upon my judgment, but that makes not the least
difference in the world when you already know
all about it. It is not any matter when you are
called upon to express it; you can get up and do
it, and my verdict has already been recorded in
my heart and in my head as regards Mr. Jerome
and his administration of the criminal affairs of
this county.

I agree with everything Mr. Choate has said
in his letter regarding Mr. Jerome; I agree with
everything Mr. Shepard has said; and I agree
with everything Mr. Jerome has said in his own
commendation. And I thought Mr. Jerome was
modest in that. If he had been talking about
another officer of this county, he could have
painted the joys and sorrows of office and his
victories in even stronger language than he did.

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DINNER TO MR. JEROME

I voted for Mr. Jerome in those old days, and
I should like to vote for him again if he runs for
any office. I moved out of New York, and that
is the reason, I suppose, I cannot vote for him
again. There may be some way, but I have not
found it out. But now I am a farmer — a farmer
up in Connecticut, and winning laurels. Those
people already speak with such high favor, ad-
miration, of my farming, and they say that I am
the only man that has ever come to that region
who could make two blades of grass grow where
only three grew before.

Well, I cannot vote for him. You see that. As
it stands now, I cannot. I am crippled in that
way and to that extent, for I would ever so much
like to do it. I am not a Congress, and I cannot
distribute pensions, and I don't know any other
legitimate way to buy a vote. But if I should
think of any legitimate way, I shall make use of
it, and then I shall vote for Mr. Jerome.

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HENRY IRVING

The Dramatic and Literary Society of London gave
a welcome-home dinner to Sir Henry Irving at the
Savoy Hotel, London, June 9, 1900. In proposing
the toast of " The Drama " Mr. Clemens said:

I FIND my task a very easy one. I have been
a dramatist for thirty years. I have had an
ambition in all that time to overdo the work of
the Spaniard who said he left behind him four
hundred dramas when he died. I leave behind
me four hundred and fifteen, and am not yet dead.

The greatest of all the arts is to write a drama.
It is a most difficult thing. It requires the highest
talent possible and the rarest gifts. No, there is
another talent that ranks with it — for anybody
can write a drama — I had f our hundred of them —
but to get one accepted requires real ability. And
I have never had that felicity yet.

But human nature is so constructed, we are so
persistent, that when we know that we are born
to a thing we do not care what the world thinks
about it. We go on exploiting that talent year
after year, as I have done. I shall go on writing

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HENRY IRVING

dramas, and some day the impossible may hap-
pen, but I am not looking for it.

In writing plays the chief thing is novelty.
The world grows tired of solid forms in all the
arts. I struck a new idea myself years ago. I
was not surprised at it. I was always expecting
it would happen. A person who has suffered
disappointment for many years loses confidence,
and I thought I had better make inquiries before
I exploited my new idea of doing a drama in the
form of a dream, so I wrote to a great authority
on knowledge of all kinds, and asked him whether
it was new.

I could depend upon him. He lived in my
dear home in America — that dear home, dearer
to me through taxes. He sent me a list of plays
in which that old device had been used, and he
said that there was also a modern lot. He trav-
elled back to China and to a play dated two thou-
sand six hundred years before the Christian era.
He said he would follow it up with a list of the
previous plays of the kind, and in his innocence
would have carried them back to the Flood.

That is the most discouraging thing that has
ever happened to me in my dramatic career. I
have done a world of good in a silent and private
way, and have furnished Sir Henry Irving with
plays and plays and plays. What has he achieved
through that influence See where he stands
now — on the summit of his art in two worlds —

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and it was I who put him there — that partly put
him there.

I need not enlarge. upon the influence the drama
has exerted upon civilization. It has made good
morals entertaining. I am to be followed by Mr.
Pinero. I conceive that we stand at the head of
the profession. He has not written as many
plays as I have, but he has had that God-given
talent, which I lack, of working hem off on the
manager. I couple his name with this toast, and
add the hope that his influence will be supported
in exercising his masterly handicraft in that great
gift, and that he will long live to continue his fine
work.

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DINNER TO HAMILTON W. MABIE

Address Delivered April 29, 1901

In introducing Mr. Clemens, Doctor Van Dyke said:
"The longer the speaking goes on to-night the more
I wonder how I got this job, and the only explanation
I can give for it is that it is the same kind of com-
pensation for the number of articles I have sent to
The Outlook, to be rejected by Hamilton W. Mabie.
There is one man here to-night that has a job cut out
for him that none of you would have had — a man
whose humor has put a girdle of light around the
globe, and whose sense of humor has been an example
for all five continents. He is going to speak to you.
Gentlemen, you know him best as Mark Twain."

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN,— This
man knows now how it feels to be the chief
guest, and if he has enjoyed it he is the first man I
have ever seen in that position that did enjoy it.
And I know, by side-remarks which he made to
me before his ordeal came upon him, that he was
feeling as some of the rest of us have felt under
the same circumstances. He was afraid that he
would not do himself justice; but he did — to my
surprise. It is a most serious thing to be a chief
guest on an occasion like this, and it is admirable,
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it is fine. It is a great compliment to a man that
he shall come out of it so gloriously as Mr. Mabie
came out of it to-night — to my surprise. He did
it well.

He appears to be editor of The Outlook, and
notwithstanding that, I have every admiration,
because when everything is said concerning The
Outlook, after all one must admit that it is frank
in its delinquencies, that it is outspoken in its
departures from fact, that it is vigorous in its
mistaken criticisms of men like me. I have lived
in this world a long, long time, and I know you
must not judge a man by the editorials that he
puts in his paper. A man is always better than
his printed opinions. A man always reserves to
himself on the inside a purity and an honesty
and a justice that are a credit to him, whereas
the things that he prints are just the reverse.

Oh yes, you must not judge a man by what he
writes in his paper. Even in an ordinary secular
paper a man must observe some care about it;
he must be better than the principles which he
puts in print. And that is the case with Mr.
Mabie. Why, to see what he writes about me
and the missionaries you would think he did not
have any principles. But that is Mr. Mabie in
his public capacity. Mr. Mabie in his private
capacity is just as clean a man as I am.

In this very room, a month or two ago, some
people admired that portrait; some admired this,

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HAMILTON W. MABIE

but the great majority fastened on that, and said,
"There is a portrait that is a beautiful piece of
art." When that portrait is a hundred years old it
will suggest what were the manners and customs
in our time. Just as they talk about Mr, Mabie
to-night, in that enthusiastic way, pointing out
the various virtues of the man and the grace of
his spirit, and all that, so was that portrait talked
about. They were enthusiastic, just as we men
have been over the character and the work of Mr.
Mabie. And when they were through they said
that portrait, fine as it is, that work, beautiful
as it is, that piece of humanity on that canvas,
gracious and fine as it is, does not rise to those
perfections that exist in the man himself. Come
up, Mr. Alexander. [The reference was to James
W. Alexander, who happened to be sitting be-
neath the portrait of himself on the wall.] Now,
I should come up and show myself. But he can-
not do it, he cannot do it. He was born that
way, he was reared in that way. Let his modesty
be an example, and I wish some of you had it,
too. But that is just what I have been saying —
that portrait, fine as it is, is not as fine as the
man it represents, and all the things that have
been said about Mr. Mabie, and certainly they
have been very nobly worded and beautiful, still
fall short of the real Mabie.

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INTRODUCING NYE AND RILEY

James Whitcomb Riley and Edgar Wilson Nye (Bill
Nye) were to give readings in TremorU Temple, Boston,
November, 1888. Mr. Clemens was induced to intro-
duce Messrs. Riley and Nye. His appearance on the
platform was a surprise to the audience, and when
they recognized him there was a tremendous demon-
stration.

I AM very glad indeed to introduce these young
people to you, and at the same time get acquaint-
ed with them myself. I have seen them more than
once for a moment, but have not had the privi-
lege of knowing them personally as intimately as
I wanted to. I saw them first, a great many
years ago, when Mr. Barnum had them, and they
were just fresh from Siam. The ligature was
their best hold then, the literature became their
best hold later, when one of them committed
an indiscretion, and they had to cut the old bond
to accommodate the sheriff.

In that old former tiihe this one was Chang,
that one was Eng. The sympathy existing be-
tween the two was most extraordinary; it was so
fine, so strong, so subtle, that what the one ate
the other digested; when one slept, the other

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INTRODUCING NYE AND RILEY

snored; if one sold a thing, the other scooped the
usufruct. This independent and yet dependent
action was observable in all the details of their
daily life — I mean this quaint and arbitrary dis-
tribution of originating cause and resulting effect
between the two — between, I may say, this dynamo
and the other always motor, or, in other words,
that the one was always the creating force, the
other always the utilizing force; no, no, for while
it is true that within certain well-defined zones
of activity the one was always dynamo and the
other always motor, within certain other well-de-
fined zones these positions became exactly reversed.

For instance, in moral matters Mr. Chang Riley
was always dynamo, Mr. Eng Nye was always
motor; for while Mr. Chang Riley had a high — in
fact, an abnormally high and fine — moral sense,
he had no machinery to work it with; whereas,
Mr. Eng Nye, who hadn't any moral sense at all,
and hasn't yet, was equipped with all the neces-
sary plant for putting a noble deed through, if
he could only get the inspiration on reasonable
terms outside.

In intellectual matters, on the other hand, Mr,
Eng Nye was always dynamo, Mr. Chang Riley
was always motor; Mr. Eng Nye had a stately
intellect, but couldn't make it go; Mr. Chang
Riley hadn't, but could. That is to say, that while
Mr. Chang Riley couldn't think things himself, he
had a marvellous natural grace in setting them

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down and weaving them together when his pal
furnished the raw material.

Thus, working together, they made a strong
team; laboring together, they could do miracles;
but break the circuit, and both were impotent.
It has remained so to this day: they must travel
together, hoe, and plant, and plough, and reap,
and sell their public together, or there's no result.

I have made this explanation, this analysis, this
vivisection, so to speak, in order that you may
enjoy these delightful adventurers understand-
ingly. When Mr. Eng Nye's deep and broad
and limpid philosophies flow by in front of you,
refreshing all the regions round about with their
gracious floods, you will remember that it isn't his
water ; it's the other man's, and he is only working
the pump. And when Mr. Chang Riley enchants
your ear, and soothes your spirit, and touches
your heart with the sweet and genuine music of
his poetry — as sweet and as genuine as any that
his friends, the birds and the bees, make about
his other friends, the woods and the flowers —
you will remember, while placing justice where
justice is due, that it isn't his music, but
the other man's — he is only turning the crank.

I beseech for these visitors a fair field, a single-
minded, one-eyed umpire, and a score bulletin
barren of goose-eggs if they earn it — and I judge
they will and hope they will. Mr. James Whit-
comb Chang Riley will now go to the bat.

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DINNER TO WHITELAW REID

Address at the Dinner in Honor op Ambassador

Reid, Given by the Pilgrims' Club op

New York on February 19, 1908

I AM very proud to respond to this toast, as it
recalls the proudest day of my life. The de-
lightful hospitality shown me at the time of my
visit to Oxford I shall cherish until I die. In that
long and distinguished career of mine I value that
degree above all other honors. When the ship
landed even the stevedores gathered on the shore
and gave an English cheer. Nothing could sur-
pass in my life the pleasure of those four weeks.
No one could pass by me without taking my hand,
even the policemen. I've been in all the principal
capitals of Christendom in my life, and have al-
ways been an object of interest to policemen.
Sometimes there was suspicion in their eyes, but
not always. With their puissant hand they
would hold up the commerce of the world to let
me pass.

I noticed in the papers this afternoon a de-
spatch from Washington, saying that Congress
would immediately pass a bill restoring to our

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gold coinage the motto ' ' In God We Trust." I'm
glad of that; I'm glad of that. I was troubled
when that motto was removed. Sure enough, the
prosperities of the whole nation went down in a
heap when we ceased to trust in God in that con-
spicuously advertised way. / I knew there would
be trouble. And if Pierpont Morgan hadn't
stepped in — Bishop Lawrence may now add to
his message to the old country that we are now
trusting in God again. So we can discharge Mr.
Morgan from his office with honor!

Mr. Reid said an hour or so ago something about
my ruining my activities last summer. They
are not ruined, they are renewed. I am stronger
now — much stronger. I suppose that the spiritual
uplift I received increased my physical power
more than anything I ever had before. I was
dancing last night at 12.30 o'clock.

Mr. Choate has mentioned Mr. Reid's predeces-
sors. Mr. Choate's head is full of history, and
some of it is true, too. I enjoyed hearing him
tell about the list of the men who had the place
before he did. He mentioned a long list of those
predecessors, people I never heard of before, and
elected five of them to the Presidency by his own
vote. I'm glad and proud to find Mr. Reid in that
high position, because he didn't look it when I
knew him forty years ago. I was talking to Reid
the other day, and he showed me my autograph
on an old paper twenty years old. I didn't know

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DINNER TO WHITELAW REID

I had an autograph twenty years ago. Nobody
ever asked me for it.

I remember a dinner I had long ago with White-
law Reid and John Hay at Reid's expense. I
had another last summer when I was in London
at the embassy that Choate blackguards so. I'd
like to live there.

Some people say they couldn't live on the
salary, but I could live on the salary and the na-
tion together. Some of us don't appreciate what
this country can do. There's John Hay, Reid,
Choate, and me. This is the only country in the
world where youth, talent, and energy can reach
such heights. It shows what we could do without
means, and what people can do with talent and
energy when they find it in people like us.

When I first came to New York they were all
struggling young men, and I am glad to see that
they have got on in the world. I knew John Hay
when I .had no white hairs in my head and more
hair than Reid has now. Those were days of joy
and hope. Reid and Hay were on the staff of the
Tribune. I went there once in that old building,
and I looked all around, and I finally found a door
ajar and looked in. It wasn't Reid or Hay there,
but it was Horace Greeley. Those were in the days
when Horace Greeley was a king. That was the
first time I ever saw him and the last.

I was admiring him when he stopped and seemed
to realize that there was a fine presence there

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somewhere. He tried to smile, but he was out of
smiles. He looked at me a moment, and said:
"What in H— do you want ?"

He began with that word "H." That's a long
word and a profane word. I don't remember
what the word was now, but I recognized the
power of it. I had never used that language
myself, but at that moment I was converted. It
has been a great refuge for me in time of trouble.
If a man doesn't know that language he can't ex-
press himself on strenuous occasions. When you
have that word at your command let trouble
come.

But later Hay rose, and you know what summit
Whitelaw Reid has reached, and you see me.
Those two men have regulated troubles of nations
and conferred peace upon mankind. And in my
humble way, of which I am quite vain, I was the
principal moral force in all those great inter-
national movements. These great men illustrated
what I say. Look at us great people — we all
come from the dregs of society. That's what can
be done in this country. That's what this coun-
try does for you.

Choate here — he hasn't got anything to say,
but he says it just the same, and he can do it so
felicitously, too. I said long ago he was the hand-
somest man America ever produced. May the
progress of civilization always rest on such dis-
tinguished men as it has in the past!

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ROGERS AND RAILROADS

At a Banquet Given Mr. H. H. Rogers by the
Business Men op Norfolk, Va., Celebrat-
ing the Opening op the Virginian
Railway, April, 3, 1909

Toasttnaster:

" 1 have often thought that when the time comes,
which must come to all of us, when we reach that
Great Way in the Great Beyond, and the question is
propounded, ' What have you done to gain admission
into this great realm?' if the answer could be sin-
cerely made, ' I have made men laugh,' it would be
the surest passport to a welcome entrance. We have
here to-night one who has made millions laugh — not
the loud laughter that bespeaks the vacant mind, but
the laugh of intelligent mirth that helps the human
heart and the human mind. I refer, of course, to
Doctor Clemens. I was going to say Mark Twain,
his literary title, which is a household phrase in more
homes than that of any other man, and you know
him best by that dear old title."

I THANK you, Mr. Toastmaster, for the compli-
ment which you have paid me, and I am sure I
would rather have made people laugh than cry,
yet in my time I have made some of them cry;
and before I stop entirely I hope to make some

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

more of them cry. I like compliments. I deal
in them myself. I have listened with the greatest
pleasure to the compliments which the chair-
man has paid to Mr. Rogers and that road of
his to-night, and I hope some of them are
deserved.

It is no small distinction to a man like that
to sit here before an intelligent crowd like this
and to be classed with Napoleon and Caesar. Why
didn't he say that this was the proudest day of
his life ? Napoleon and Caesar are dead, and they
can't be here to defend themselves. But I'm
here!

The chairman said, and very truly, that the
most lasting thing in the hands of man are the
roads which Caesar built, and it is true that he
built a lot of them; and they are there yet.

Yes, Caesar built a lot of roads in England, and
you can find them. But Rogers has only built
one road, and he hasn't finished that yet. I like
to hear my old friend complimented, but I don't
like to hear it overdone.

I didn't go around to-day with the others to
see what he is doing. I will do that in a quiet
time, when there is not anything going on, and
when I shall not be called upon to deliver intem-
perate compliments on a railroad in which I own
no stock.

They proposed that I go along with the com-
mittee and help inspect that dump down yonder.

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I didn't go. I saw that dump. I saw that thing
when I was coming in on the steamer, and I didn't
go because I was diffident, sentimentally diffident,
about going and looking at that thing again —
that great, long, bony thing; it looked just like
Mr. Rogers's foot.

The chairman says Mr. Rogers is full of prac-
tical wisdom, and he is. It is intimated here that
he is a very ingenious man, and he is a very com-
petent financier. Maybe he is now, but it was
not always so. I know lots of private things in
his life which people don't know, and I know how
he started ; and it was not a very good start. I
could have done better myself. The first time he
crossed the Atlantic he had just made the first
little strike in oil, and he was so young he did not
like to ask questions. He did not like to appear
ignorant. To this day he don't like to appear
ignorant, but he can look as ignorant as any-
body. On board the ship they were betting on
the run of the ship, betting a couple of shillings,
or half a crown, and they proposed that this
youth from the oil regions should bet on the run
of the ship. He did not like to ask what a half-
crown was, and he didn't know; but rather than
be ashamed of himself he did bet half a crown on
the run of the ship, and in bed he could not sleep.
He wondered if he could afford that outlay in
case he lost. He kept wondering over it, and
said to himself: "A king's crown must be worth

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$20,000, so half a crown would cost $10,000."
He could not afford to bet away $10,000 on the
run of the ship, so he went up to the stakeholder
and gave him $150 to let him off.

I like to hear Mr. Rogers complimented. I am
not stingy in compliments to him myself. Why,
I did it to-day when I sent his wife a telegram to
comfort her. That is the kind of person I am.
I knew she would be uneasy about him. I knew
she would be solicitous about what he might do
down here, so I did it to quiet her and to comfort
her. I said he was doing well for a person out of
practice. There is nothing like it. He is like I
used to be. There were times when I was care-
less — careless in my dress when I got older. You
know how uncomfortable your wife can get when
you are going away without her superintendence.
Once when my wife could not go with me (she
always went with me when she could — I always
did meet that kind of luck), I was going to Wash-
ton once, a long time ago, in Mr. Cleveland's first
administration, and she could not go; but, in her
anxiety that I should not desecrate the house,
she made preparation. She knew that there was
to be a reception of those authors at the White
House at seven o'clock in the evening. She said,
"If I should tell you now what I want to ask of
you, you would forget it before you get to Wash-
ington, and, therefore, I have written it on a
card, and you will find it in your dress -vest

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pocket when you are dressing at the Arlington —
when you are dressing to see the President." I
never thought of it again until I was dressing, and
I felt in that pocket and took it out, and it said,
in a kind of imploring way, " Don't wear your
arctics in the White House."

You complimented Mr. Rogers on his energy,
his foresightedness, complimented him in various
ways, and he has deserved those compliments,
although I say it myself; and I enjoy them all.
There is one side of Mr. Rogers that has not been
mentioned. If you will leave that to me I will
tor :h upon that. There was a note in an editorial
in x>ne of the Norfolk papers this morning that
touched upon that very thing, that hidden side
of Mr. Rogers, where it spoke of Helen Keller and
her affection for Mr. Rogers, to whom she dedi-
cated her life book. And she has a right to feel
that way, because, without the public knowing
anything about it, he rescued, if I may use that
term, that marvellous girl, that wonderful South-
ern girl, that girl who was stone deaf, blind, and
dumb from scarlet - fever when she was a baby
eighteen months old; and who now is as well
and thoroughly educated as any woman on this
planet at twenty-nine years of age. She is the
most marvellous person of her sex that has existed
on this earth since Joan of Arc.

That is not all Mr. Rogers has done; but you
never see that side of his character, because it is

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never protruding; but he lends a helping hand
daily out of that generous heart of his. You never
hear of it. He is supposed to be a moon which
has one side dark and the other bright. But the
other side, though you don't see it, is not dark;
it is bright, and its rays penetrate, and others do
see it who are not God.

I would take this opportunity to tell something
that I have never been allowed to tell by Mr.
Rogers, either by my mouth or in print, and if
I don't look at him I can tell it now.

rln 1893, when the publishing company of
Charles L. Webster, of which I was financial
agent, failed, it left me heavily in debt. If you
will remember what commerce was at that time
you will recall that you could not sell anything,
and could not buy anything, and I was on my
back; my books were not worth anything at all,
and I could not give away my copyrights. Mr.
Rogers had long enough vision ahead to say,
"Your books have supported you before, and
after the panic is over they will support you
again," and that was a correct proposition. He
saved my copyrights, and saved me from financial
ruin. He it was who arranged with my creditors
to allow me to roam the face of the earth for four
years and persecute the nations thereof with
lectures, promising that at the end of four years

LI would pay dollar for dollar. That arrangement
was made; otherwise I would now be living out-

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of-doors under an umbrella, and a borrowed one
at that.

You see his white mustache and his head laying
to get white (he is always trying to look like me —
I don't blame him for that). These are only em-
blematic of his character, and that is all. I say,
without exception, hair and all, he is the whitest
man I have ever known.

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THE OLD-FASHIONED PRINTER

Address at thb Typothbt,* Dinner Given at Dbl-

monico's, January i8, 1886, Commemorating

the Birthday op Benjamin Franklin

Mr. Clemens responded to the toast " The Composi-
tor: 9

THE chairman's historical reminiscences of
Gutenberg have caused me to fall into rem-
iniscences, for I myself am something of an an-
tiquity. All things change in the procession of
years, and it may be that I am among strangers.
It may be that the printer of to-day is not the
printer of thirty-five years ago. I was no stranger
to him. I knew him well. I built his fire for
him in the winter mornings; I brought his water
from the village pump; I swept out his office; I
picked up his type from under his stand; and,
if he were there to see, I put the good type in his
case and the broken ones among the "hell mat-
ter" 5 and if he wasn't there to see, I dumped it
all with the "pi" on the imposing-stone — for that
was the furtive fashion of the cub, and I was a
cub. I wetted down the paper Saturdays, I

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turned it Sundays — for this was a country weekly j
I rolled, I washed the rollers, I washed the forms,
I folded the papers, I carried them around at
dawn Thursday mornings. The carrier was then
an object of interest to all the dogs in town. If
I had saved up all the bites I ever received, I
could keep M. Pasteur busy for a year. I en-
veloped the papers that were for the mail — we had
a hundred town subscribers and three hundred
and fifty country ones; the town subscribers paid
in groceries and the country ones in cabbages
and cord-wood — when they paid at all, which was
merely sometimes, and then we always stated
the fact in the paper, and gave them a puff ; and
if we forgot it they stopped the paper. Every
man on the town list helped edit the thing — that
is, he gave orders as to how it was to be edited;
dictated its opinions, marked out its course for it,
and every time the boss failed to connect he
stopped his paper. We were just infested with
critics, and we tried to satisfy them all over. We
had one subscriber who paid cash, and he was
more trouble than all the rest. He bought us
once a year, body and soul, for two dollars. He
used to modify our politics every which way, and
he made us change our religion four times in
five years. If we ever tried to reason with him,
he would threaten to stop his paper, and, of
course, that meant bankruptcy and destruction.
That man used to write articles a column and a

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half long, leaded long primer, and sign them
"Junius," or "Veritas," or "Vox Populi," or some
other high-sounding rot; and then, after it was
set up, he would come in and say he had changed
his mind — which was a gilded figure of speech,
because he hadn't any — and order it to be left out.
We couldn't afford "bogus" in that office, so we
always took the leads out, altered the signature,
credited the article to the rival paper in the next
village, and put it in. Well, we did have one or
two kinds of "bogus." Whenever there was a
barbecue, or a circus, or a baptizing, we knocked
off for half a day, and then to make up for short
matter we would "turn over ads" — turn over the
whole page and duplicate it. The other "bogus "
was deep philosophical stuff, which we judged
nobody ever read ; so we kept a galley of it stand-
ing, and kept on slapping the same old batches
of it in, every now and then, till it got dangerous.
Also, in the early days of the telegraph we used to
economize on the news. We picked out the items
that were pointless and barren of information
and stood them on a galley, and changed the dates
and localities, and used them over and over again
till the public interest in them was worn to the
bone. We marked the ads, but we seldom paid
any attention to the marks afterward; so the
life of a "td" ad and a "tf" ad was equally
eternal. I have seen a "td" notice of a sheriff's
sale still booming serenely along two years after

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the sale was over, the sheriff dead, and the whole
circumstance become ancient history. Most of
the yearly ads were patent-medicine stereotypes,
and we used to fence with them.

I can see that printing-office of prehistoric times
yet, with its horse bills on the walls, its "d" boxes
clogged with tallow, because we always stood
the candle in the "k" box nights, its towel, which
was not considered soiled until it could stand alone,
and other signs and symbols that marked the
establishment of that kind in the Mississippi
Valley; and I can see, also, the tramping "jour,"
who flitted by in the summer and tarried a day,
with his wallet stuffed with one shirt and a hatful
of handbills ; for if he couldn't get any type to set
he would do a temperance lecture. His way of
life was simple, his needs not complex; all he
wanted was plate and bed and money enough to
get drunk on, and he was satisfied. But it may
be, as I have said, that I am among strangers,
and sing the glories of a forgotten age to unfa-
miliar ears, so I will "make even " and stop.

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SOCIETY OF AMERICAN AUTHORS

On November 15, 1900, the society gave a reception
to Mr. Clemens, who came with his wife and daughter.
So many members surrounded the guests that Mr.
Clemens asked: " Is this genuine popularity or is it all
a part of a prearranged programme?"

IUIR. CHAIRMAN, LADIES AND GENTLE-
I V I MEN, — It seems a most difficult thing for
any man to say anything about me that is not
complimentary. I don't know what the charm
is about me which makes it impossible for a per-
son to say a harsh thing about me and say it
heartily, as if he was glad to say it.

If this thing keeps on it will make me believe
that I am what these kind chairmen say of me.
In introducing me, Judge Ransom spoke of my
modesty as if he was envious of me. I would like
to have one man come out flat-footed and say
something harsh and disparaging of me, even if
it were true. I thought at one time, as the learned
Judge was speaking, that I had found that man;
but he wound up, like all the others, by saying
complimentary things.

I am constructed like everybody else, and en-
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joy a compliment as well as any other fool, but I
do like to have the other side presented. And
there is another side. I have a wicked side.
Estimable friends who know all about it would
tell you and take a certain delight in telling you
things that I have done, and things further that
I have not repented.

The real life that I live, and the real life that
I suppose all of you live, is a life of interior sin.
That is what makes life valuable and pleasant.
To lead a life of undiscovered sin! That is true
joy.

Judge Ransom seems to have all the virtues
that he ascribes to me. But, oh my! if you could
throw an X-ray through him. We are a pair.
I have made a life-study of trying to appear to
be what he seems to think I am. Everybody be-
lieves that I am a monument of all the virtues, but
it is nothing of the sort. I am living two lives,
and it keeps me pretty busy.

Some day there will be a chairman who will for-
get some of these merits of mine, and then he
will make a speech.

I have more personal vanity than modesty,
and twice as much veracity as the two put to-
gether.

When that fearless and forgetful chairman is
found there will be another story told. At the
Press Club recently I thought that I had found
him. He started in in the way that I knew I

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should be painted with all sincerity, and was
leading to things that would not be to my credit ;
but when he said that he never read a book of
mine I knew at once that he was a liar, because
he never could have had all the wit and intelli-
gence with which he was blessed unless he had
read my works as a basis.

I like compliments. I like to go home and tell
them all over again to the members of my family.
They don't believe them, but I like to tell them
in the home circle, all the same. I like to dream
of them if I can.

I thank everybody for their compliments, but
I don't think that I am praised any more than I
am entitled to be.

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READING-ROOM OPENING

On October 13, 1900, Mr. Clemens made his last
address preceding his departure for America at Kensal
Rise, London.

I FORMALLY declare this reading-room open,
and I think that the legislature should not
compel a community to provide itself with in-
telligent food, but give it the privilege of provid-
ing it if the community so desires.

If the community is anxious to have a reading-
room it would put its hand in its pocket and
bring out the penny tax. I think it a proof of
the healthy, moral, financial, and mental condi-
dition of the community if it taxes itself for its
mental food.

A reading-room is the proper introduction to a
library, leading up through the newspapers and
magazines to other literature. What would we
do without newspapers?

Look at the rapid manner in which the news of
the Galveston disaster was made known to the
entire world. This reminds me of an episode
which occurred fifteen years ago when I was at
church in Hartford, Connecticut.

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The clergyman decided to make a collection for
the survivors, if any. He did not include me
among the leading citizens who took the plates
around for collection. I complained to the gov-
ernor of his lack of financial trust in me, and he
replied: "I would trust you myself — if you had a
bell-punch."

You have paid me many compliments, and I
like to listen to compliments. I indorse all your
chairman has said to you about the union of
England and America. He also alluded to my
name, of which I am rather fond.

A little girl wrote me from New Zealand in a
letter I received yesterday, stating that her father
said my proper name was not Mark Twain but
Samuel Clemens, but that she knew better, be-
cause Clemens was the name of the man who sold
the patent medicine, and his name was not Mark.
She was sure it was Mark Twain, because Mark
is in the Bible and Twain is in the Bible.

I was very glad to get that expression of con-
fidence in my origin, and as I now know my
name to be a scriptural one, I am not without
hopes of making it worthy.

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LITERATURE

Address at the Royal Literary Fund Banquet,
London, May 4, 1900

Anthony Hope introduced Mr. Clemens to make the
response to the toast "Literature "

A AR. HOPE has been able to deal adequately
I VI with this toast without assistance from me.
Still, I was born generous. If he had advanced
any theories that needed refutation or correction
I would have attended to them, and if he had made
any statements stronger than those which he is in
the habit of making I would have dealt with
them.

In fact, I was surprised at the mildness of his
statements. I could not have made such state-
ments if I had preferred to, because to exaggerate
is the only way I can approximate to the truth.
You cannot have a theory without principles.
Principles is another name for prejudices. I have
no prejudices in politics, religion, literature, or
anything else.

I am now on my way to my own country to
run for the presidency because there are not yet

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enough candidates in the field, and those who
have entered are too much hampered by then-
own principles, which are prejudices.

I propose to go there to purify the political
atmosphere. I am in favor of everything every-
body is in favor of. What you should do is to
satisfy the whole nation, not half of it, for then
you would only be half a President.

There could not be a broader platform than
mine. I am in favor of anything and every-
thing — of temperance and intemperance, moral-
ity and qualified immorality, gold standard and
free silver.

I have tried all sorts of things, and that is why
I want to try the great position of ruler of a
country. I have been in turn reporter, editor,
publisher, author, lawyer, burglar. I have worked
my. way up, and wish to continue to do so.

I read to-day in a magazine article that Chris-
tendom issued last year fifty-five thousand new
books. Consider what that means! Fifty-five
thousand new books meant fifty-four thousand
new authors. We are going to have them all on
our hands to take care of sooner or later. There-
fore, double your subscriptions to the literary
fund!

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DISAPPEARANCE OF LITERATURE

Address at the Dinner op the Nineteenth Cen-
tury Club, at Sherry's, New York,
November 20, 1900

Mr. Clemens spoke to the toast " The Disappearance
of Literature." Doctor Gould presided, and in intro-
ducing Mr. Clemens said that he (the speaker), when
in Germany, had to do a lot of apologizing for a certain
literary man who was taking what the Germans thought
undue liberties with their language.

IT wasn't necessary for your chairman to apolo-
gize for me in Germany. It wasn't necessary at
all. Instead of that he ought to have impressed
upon those poor benighted Teutons the service I
rendered them. Their language had needed tux-
tangling for a good many years. Nobody else
seemed to want to take the job, and so I took it,
and I flatter myself that I made a pretty good
job of it. The Germans have an inhuman way
of cutting up their verbs. Now a verb has a hard
time enough of it in this world when it's all to-
gether. It's downright inhuman to split it up.
But that's just what those Germans do. They
take part of a verb and put it down here, like a

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stake, and they take the other part of it and
put it away over yonder like another stake, and
between these two limits they just shovel in Ger-
man. I maintain that there is no necessity for
apologizing for a man who helped in a small way
to stop such mutilation.

We have heard a discussion to-night on the dis-
appearance of literature. That's no new thing.
That's what certain kinds of literature have been
doing for several years. The fact is, my friends,
that the fashion in literature changes, and the
literary tailors have to change their cuts or go
out of business. Professor Winchester here, if I
remember fairly correctly what he said, remarked
that few, if any, of the novels produced to-day
would live as long as the novels of Walter Scott.
That may be his notion. Maybe he is right; but
so far as I am concerned, I don't care if they don't.

Professor Winchester also said something about
there being no modern epics like Paradise Lost
I guess he's right. He talked as if he was pretty
familiar with that piece of literary work, and
nobody would suppose that he never had read it.
I don't believe any of you have ever read Paradise
Lost, and you don't want to. That's something
that you just want to take on trust. It's a classic,
just as Professor Winchester says, and it meets
his definition of a classic — something that every-
body wants to have read and nobody wants to
read.

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Professor Trent also had a good deal to say
about the disappearance of literature. He said that
Scott would oulive all his critics. I guess that's
true. The fact of the business is, you've got to
be one of two ages to appreciate Scott. When
you're eighteen you can read Ivanhoe, and you
want to wait until you are ninety to read some
of the rest. It takes a pretty well-regulated,
abstemious critic to live ninety years.

But as much as these two gentlemen have
talked about the disappearance of literature,
they didn't say anything about my books. May-
be they think they've disappeared. If they do,
that just shows their ignorance on the general
subject of literature. I am not as young as I
was several years ago, and maybe I'm not so fash-
ionable, but I'd be willing to take my chances
with Mr. Scott to-morrow morning in selling a
piece of literature to the Century Publishing
Company. And I haven't got much of a pull
here, either. I often think that the highest com-
pliment ever paid to my poor efforts was paid by
Darwin through President Eliot, of Harvard Col-
lege. At least, Eliot said it was a compliment,
and I always take the opinion of great men like
college presidents on all such subjects as that.

I went out to Cambridge one day a few years
ago and called on President Eliot. In the course
of the conversation he said that he had just re-
turned from England, and that he was very much

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touched by what he considered the high com-
pliment Darwin was paying to my books, and he
went on to tell me something like this:

"Do you know that there is one room in Dar-
win's house, his bedroom, where the housemaid
is never allowed to touch two things ? One is a
plant he is growing and studying while it grows"
(it was one of those insect-devouring plants which
consumed bugs and beetles and things for the
particular delectation of Mr. Darwin) "and the
other some books that lie on the night table at
the head of his bed. They are your books, Mr.
Clemens, and Mr. Darwin reads them every night
to lull him to sleep."

My friends, I thoroughly appreciated that com-
pliment, and considered it the highest one that
was ever paid to me. To be the means of sooth-
ing to sleep a brain teeming with bugs and squirm-
ing things like Darwin's was something that I
had never hoped for, and now that he is dead I
never hope to be able to do it again.

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THE NEW YORK PRESS CLUB DINNER

At thb Annual Dinner, November 13, 1900

Col. William L. Brown, the former editor of the Daily
News, as president of the club, introduced Mr. Clemens
as the principal ornament of American literature.

I MUST say that I have already begun to regret
that I left my gun at home. I've said so many
times when a chairman has distressed me with
just such compliments that the next time such
a thing occurs I will certainly use a gun on that
chairman. It is my privilege to compliment him
in return. You behold before you a very, very
old man. A cursory glance at him would deceive
the most penetrating. His features seem to re-
veal a person dead to all honorable instincts —
they seem to bear the traces of all the known
crimes, instead of the marks of a life spent for
the most part, and now altogether, in the Sunday-
school — of a life that may well stand as an ex-
ample to all generations that have risen or will
riz — I mean to say, will rise. His private character
is altogether suggestive of virtues which to all
appearances he has not. If you examine his past
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history you will find it as deceptive as his features,
because it is marked all over with waywardness
and misdemeanor — mere effects of a great spirit
upon a weak body — mere accidents of a great
career. In his heart he cherishes every virtue
on the list of virtues, and he practises them all —
secretly — always secretly. You all know him so
well that there is no need for him to be intro-
duced here. Gentlemen, Colonel Brown.

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THE ALPHABET AND SIMPLIFIED
SPELLING

Address at the Dinner Given to Mr. Carnegie
at the Dedication op the New York En-
gineers' Club, December 9, 1907

Mr. Clemens was introduced by the president of the
club, who, quoting from the Mark Twain autobiography,
recalled the day when the distinguished writer came to
New York with $3 in small change in his pockets and
a $10 bill sewed in his clothes.

IT seems to me that I was around here in the
neighborhood of the Public Library about fifty
or sixty years ago. I don't deny the circum-
stance, although I don't see how you got it out of
my autobiography, which was not to be printed
until I am dead, unless I'm dead now. I had
that $3 in change, and I remember well the $10
which was sewed in my coat. I have prospered
since. Now I have plenty of money and a dis-
position to squander it, but I can't. One of
those trust companies is taking care of it.

Now, as this is probably the last time that I
shall be out after nightfall this winter* I must

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say that I have come here with a mission, and I
would make my errand of value.

Many compliments have been paid to Mr. Car-
negie to-night. I was expecting them. They
are very gratifying to me.

I have been a guest of honor myself , and I know
what Mr. Carnegie is experiencing now. It is em-
barrassing to get compliments and compliments
and only compliments, particularly when he
knows as well as the rest of us that on the other
side of him there are all sorts of things worthy
of our condemnation.

Just look at Mr. Carnegie's face. It is fairly
scintillating with fictitious innocence. You would
think, looking at him, that he had never com-
mitted a crime in his life. But no — look at his
pestiferious simplified spelling. You can't any of
you imagine what a crime that has been. Tor-
quemada was nothing to Mr. Carnegie. That old
fellow shed some blood in the Inquisition, but Mr.
Carnegie has brought destruction to the entire
race. I know he didn't mean it to be a crime,
but it was, just the same. He's got us all so we
can't spell anything.

The trouble with him is that he attacked orthog-
raphy at the wrong end. He meant well, but he
attacked the symptoms and not the cause of the
disease. He ought to have gone to work on the
alphabet. There's not a vowel in it with a definite
value, and not a consonant that you can hitch

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SIMPLIFIED SPELLING

anything to. Look at the "h's" distributed all
around. There's "gherkin." What are you
going to do with the "h" in that? What the
devil's the use of "h" in gherkin, I'd like to
know. It's one thing I admire the English for:
they just don't mind anything about them at all.

But look at the "pneumatics" and the "pneu-
monias" and the rest of them. A real reform
would settle them once and for all, and wind up
by giving us an alphabet that we wouldn't have
to spell with at all, instead of this present silly
alphabet, which I faiicy was invented by a drunk-
en thief. Why> there isn't a man who doesn't
have to throw out about fifteen hundred words
a day when he writes his letters because he can't
spell them! It's like trying to do a St. Vitus's
dance with wooden legs.

Now I'll bet there isn't a man here who can
spell "pterodactyl," not even the prisoner at the
bar. I'd like to hear him try once — but not in
public, for it's too near Sunday, when all extrav-
agant histrionic entertainments are barred. I'd
like to hear him try in private, and when he
got through trying to spell "pterodactyl" you
wouldn't know whether it was a fish or a beast or
a bird, and whether it flew on its legs or walked
with its wings. The chances are that he would
give it tusks and make it lay eggs.

Let's get Mr. Carnegie to reform the alphabet,
and we'll pray for him — if he'll take the risk.

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

If we had adequate, competent vowels, with a
system of accents, giving to each vowel its own
soul and value, so every shade of that vowel
would be shown in its accent, there is not a word
in any tongue that we could not spell accurately.
That would be competent, adequate, simplified
spelling, in contrast to the clipping, the hair punch-
ing, the carbuncles, and the cancers which go by
the name of simplified spelling. If I ask you
what b-o-w spells you can't tell me unless you
know which b-o-w I mean, and it is the same with
r-o-w, b-o-r-e, and the whole family of words
which were born out of lawful wedlock and don't
know their own origin.

Now, if we had an alphabet that was adequate
and competent, instead of inadequate and incom-
petent, things would be different. Spelling re-
form has only made it bald-headed and unsightly.
There is the whole tribe of them, "row" and
"read" and "lead" — a whole family who don't
know who they are. I ask you to pronounce
s-o-w, and you ask me what kind of a one.

If we had a sane, determinate alphabet, instead
of a hospital of comminuted eunuchs, you would
know whether one referred to the act of a man
casting the seed over the ploughed land or whether
one wished to recall the lady hog and the future
ham.

It's a rotten alphabet. I appoint Mr. Carnegie
to get after it, and leave simplified spelling alone.

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SIMPLIFIED SPELLING

Simplified spelling brought about sun-spots, the
San Francisco earthquake, and the recent busi-
ness depression, which we would never have had
if spelling had been left all alone.

Now, I hope I have soothed Mr. Carnegie and
made him more comfortable than he would have
been had he received only compliment after com-
pliment, and I wish to say to him that simplified
spelling is all right, but, like chastity, you can
carry it too far.

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SPELLING AND PICTURES

Address at the Annual Dinner op the Asso-
ciated Press, at the Waldorf-Astoria,
September 18, 1906

I AM here to make an appeal to the nations in
behalf of the simplified spelling. I have come
here because they cannot all be reached except
through you. There are only two forces that can
cany light to all the corners of the globe — only
two — the suh in the heavens and the Associated
Press down here. I may seem to be flattering
the sun, but I do not mean it so; I am meaning
only to be just and fair all around. You speak
with a million voices ; no one can reach so many
races, so many hearts and intellects, as you — ex-
cept Rudyard Kipling, and he cannot do it without
your help. If the Associated Press will adopt and
use our simplified forms, and thus spread them to
the ends of the earth, covering the whole spacious
planet with them as with a garden of flowers, our
difficulties are at an end.

Every day of the three hundred and sixty-five
the only pages of the world's countless newspapers
that are read by all the human beings and angels

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and devils that can read, are these pages that are
built out of Associated Press despatches. And
so I beg you, I beseech you — oh, I implore you
to spell them in our simplified forms. Do this
daily, constantly, persistently, for three months —
only three months — it is all I ask. The infallible
result? — victory, victory all down the line. For
by that time all eyes here and above and below
will have become adjusted to the change and in
love with it, and the present clumsy and ragged
forms will be grotesque to the eye and revolting
to the soul. And we shall be rid of phthisis and
phthisic and pneumonia and pneumatics, and
diphtheria and pterodactyl, and all those other
insane words which no man addicted to the simple
Christian life can try to spell and not lose some of
the bloom of his piety in the demoralizing attempt.
Do not doubt it. We are chameleons, and our
partialities and prejudices change places with an
easy and blessed facility, and we are soon wonted
to the change and happy in it. We do not regret
our old, yellow fangs and snags and tushes after
we have worn nice, fresh, uniform store teeth a
while.

Do I seem to be seeking the good of the world?
That is the idea. It is my public attitude; pri-
vately I am merely seeking my own profit. We
all do it, but it is sound and it is virtuous, for no
public interest is anything other or nobler than a
massed accumulation of private interests. In

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1883, when the simplified-spelling movement first
tried to make a noise, I was indifferent to it ; more
— I even irreverently scoffed at it. What I needed
was an object-lesson, you see. It is the only way
to teach some people. Very well, I got it. At
that time I was scrambling along, earning the
family's bread on magazine work at seven cents a
word, compound words at single rates, just as it
is in the dark present. I was the property of a
magazine, a seven-cent slave under a boiler-iron
contract. One day there came a note from the
editor requiring me to write ten pages on this
revolting text: "Considerations concerning the
alleged subterranean holophotal extemporane-
ousness of the conchyliaceous superimbrication
of the Ornithorhyncus, as foreshadowed by the
unintelligibility of its plesiosaurian anisodactylous
aspects."

Ten pages of that. Each and every word a sev-
enteen-jointed vestibuled railroad train. Seven
cents a word. I saw starvation staring the family
in the face. I went to the editor, and I took a
stenographer along so as to have the interview
down in black and white, for no magazine editor
can ever remember any part of a business talk
except the part that's got graft in it for him and
the magazine. I said, "Read that text, Jackson,
and let it go on the record ; read it out loud." He
read it: "Considerations concerning the alleged
subterranean holophotal extemporaneousness of

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the conchyliaceous superimbrication of the Or-
nithorhyncus, as foreshadowed by the unintelligi-
bility of its plesiosaurian anisodactylous aspects."

I said, " You want ten pages of those rumbling,
great, long, summer thunderpeals, and you expect
to get them at seven cents a peal ?"

He said, "A word's a word, and seven cents is
the contract ; what are you going to do about it ?"

I said, " Jackson, this is cold-blooded oppression.
What's an average English word ?"

He said, "Six letters."

I said, "Nothing of the kind; that's French,
and includes the spaces between the words; an
average English word is four letters and a half.
By hard, honest labor I've dug all the large words
out of my vocabulary and shaved it down till
the average is three letters and a half. I can put
one thousand and two hundred words on your
page, and there's not another man alive that
can come within two hundred of it. My page is
worth eighty-four dollars to ine. It takes exact-
ly as long to fill your magazine page with long
words as it does with short ones — four hours.
Now, then, look at the criminal injustice of this
requirement of yours. I am careful, I am eco-
nomical of my time and labor. For the family's
sake I've got to be so. So I never write 'metrop-
olis' for seven cents, because I can get the same
money for 'city.' I never write 'policeman,' be-
cause I can get the same price for 'cop.' And so

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on and so on. I never write 'valetudinarian' at
all, for not even hunger and wretchedness can
humble me to the point where I will do a word
like that for seven cents ; I wouldn't do it for fif-
teen. Examine your obscene text, please j count
the words."

He counted and said it was twenty-four. I
asked him to count the letters. He made it two
hundred and three.

I said, "Now, I hope you see the whole size of
your crime. With my vocabulary I would make
sixty words out of those two hundred and five
letters, and get four dollars and twenty cents
for it; whereas for your inhuman twenty-four I
would get only one dollar and sixty-eight cents.
Ten pages of these sky-scrapers of yours would
pay me only about three hundred dollars ; in my
simplified vocabulary the same space and the
same labor would pay me eight hundred and forty
dollars. I do not wish to work upon this scandal-
ous job by the piece. I want to be hired by the
year." He coldly refused. I said:

1 'Then for the sake of the family, if you have no
feeling for me, you ought at least to allow me
overtime on that word extemporaneousness."
Again he coldly refused. I seldom say a harsh
word to any one, but I was not master of myself
then, and I spoke right out and called him an
anisodactylous plesiosaurian conchyliaceous Or-
nithorhyncus, and rotten to the heart with holo-

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photal subterranean extemporaneousness. God
forgive me for that wanton crime; he lived only
two hours.

From that day to this I have been a devoted
and hard-working member of the heaven-born
institution, the International Association for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Authors, and now I am
laboring with Carnegie's Simplified Committee,
and with my heart in the work. . . .

Now then, let us look at this mighty question
reasonably, rationally, sanely — yes, and calmly,
not excitedly. What is the real function, the
essential function, the supreme function, of lan-
guage ? Isn't it merely to convey ideas and emo-
tions? Certainly. Then if we can do it with
words of fonetic brevity and compactness, why
keep the present cumbersome forms ? But can we ?
Yes. I hold in my hand the proof of it. Here is
a letter written by a woman, right out of her
heart of hearts. I think she never saw a spelling-
book in her life. The spelling is her own. There
isn't a waste letter in it anywhere. It reduces the
fonetics to the last gasp — it squeezes the surplus-
age out of every word — there's no spelling that
can begin with it on this planet outside of the
White House. And as for the punctuation, there
isn't any. It is all one sentence, eagerly and
breathlessly uttered, without break or pause in
it anywhere. The letter is absolutely genuine —
I have the proofs of that in my possession. I

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can't stop to spell the words for you, but you can
take the letter presently and comfort your eyes
with it. I will read the letter :

"Miss dear freind I took some Close into

the armerry and give them to you to Send too the
suff rers out to California and i Hate to truble you
but i got to have one of them Back it was a black
oil wolle Shevyott With a jacket to Mach trimed
Kind of Fancy no 38 Burst measure and passy
menterry acrost the front And the color i woodent
Trubble you but it belonged to my brothers wife
and she is Mad about it i thoght she was willin
but she want she says she want done with it and
she was going to Wear it a Spell longer she ant so
free harted as what i am and she Has got more to
do with Than i have having a Husband to Work
and slave For her i gess you remember Me I am
shot and stout and light complected i torked with
you quite a spell about the suffrars and said it was
orful about that erth quake I shoodent wondar
if they had another one rite off seeine general Con-
dision of the country is Kind of Explossive i hate
to take that Black dress away from the suffrars
but i will hunt round And see if i can get another
One if i can i will call to the armerry for it if you
will jest lay it asside so no more at present from
your True freind
i liked your
appearance very Much"

Now you see what simplified spelling can do.
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SPELLING AND PICTURES

It can convey any fact you need to convey; and
it can pour out emotions like a sewer. I beg you,
I beseech you, to adopt our spelling, and print all
your despatches in it.

Now I wish to say just one entirely serious
word:

I have reached a time of life, seventy years
and a half, where none of the concerns of this
world have much interest for me personally. I
think I can speak dispassionately upon this mat-
ter, because in the little while that I have got to
remain here I can get along very well with these
old-fashioned forms, and I don't propose to make
any trouble about it at all. I shall soon be where
they won't care how I spell so long as I keep the
Sabbath.

"'There are eighty-two millions of us people that
use this orthography, and it ought to be simplified
in our behalf, but it is kept in its present con-
dition to satisfy one million people who like to
have their literature in the old form. That looks
to me to be rather selfish, and we keep the forms
as they are while we have got one million people
coming in here from foreign countries every
year and they have got to struggle with this
orthography of ours, and it keeps them back and
damages their citizenship for years until they
learn to spell the language, if they ever do learn.
This is merely sentimental argument.

People say it is the spelling of Chaucer and

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Spenser and Shakespeare and a lot of other people
who do not know how to spell anyway, and it has
been transmitted to us and we preserved it and
wish to preserve it because of its ancient and hal-
lowed associations.

Now, I don't see that there is any real argument
about that. If that argument is good, then it
would be a good argument not to banish the flies
and the cockroaches from hospitals because they
have been there so long that the patients have
got used to them and they feel a tenderness for
them on account of the associations. Why, it is
like preserving a cancer in a family because it is a
family cancer, and we are bound to it by the test
of affection and reverence and old, mouldy an-
tiquity.

I think that this declaration to improve this
orthography of ours is our family cancer, and I
wish we could reconcile ourselves to have it cut
out and let the family cancer go.

Now, you see before you the wreck and ruin of
what was once a young person like yourselves. I
am exhausted by the heat of the day. I must take
what is left of this wreck and run out of your
presence and carry it away to my home and spread
it out there and sleep the sleep of the righteous.
There is nothing much left of me but my age and
my righteousness, but I leave with you my love
and my blessing, and may you always keep your
youth.

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BOOKS AND BURGLARS

Address to the Redding (Conn.) Library Asso-
ciation, October 28, 1908

SUPPOSE this library had been in operation
a few weeks ago, and the burglars who hap-
pened along and broke into my house — taking a
lot of things they didn't need, and for that matter
which I didn't need — had first made entry into
this institution.

Picture them seated here on the floor, poring
by the light of their dark-lanterns over some of
the books they found, and thus absorbing moral
truths and getting a moral uplift. The whole
course of their lives would have been changed.
As it was, they kept straight on in their immoral
way and were sent to jail.

For all we know, they may next be sent to Con-
gress.

And, speaking of burglars, let us not speak of
them too harshly. Now, I have known so many
burglars — not exactly known, but so many of
them have come near me in my various dwelling-
places, that I am disposed to allow them credit
for whatever good qualities they possess.
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Chief among these, and, indeed, the only one I
just now think of, is their great care while doing
business to avoid disturbing people's sleep.

Noiseless as they may be while at work, how-
ever, the effect of their visitation is to murder
sleep later on.

Now we are prepared for these visitors. All
sorts of alarm devices have been put in the house,
and the ground for half a mile around it has been
electrified. The burglar who steps within this
danger zone will set loose a bedlam of sounds, and
spring into readiness for action our elaborate sys-
tem of defences. As for the fate of the trespasser,
do not seek to know that. He will never be heard
of more.

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AUTHORS' CLUB

Address at the Dinner Given in Honor op Mr.
Clemens, London, June, 1899

Mr. Clemens was introduced by Sir Walter Besant.

IT does not embarrass me to hear my books
praised so much. It only pleases and delights
me. I have not gone beyond the age when em-
barrassment is possible, but I have reached the
age when I know how to conceal it. It is such a
satisfaction to me to hear Sir Walter Besant, who
is much more capable than I to judge of my
work, deliver a judgment which is such a content-
ment to my spirit.

Well, J have thought well of the books myself,
but I think more of them now. It charms me
also to hear Sir Spencer Walpole deliver a similar
judgment, and I shall treasure his remarks also.
I shall not discount the praises in any possible
way. When I report them to my family they shall
lose nothing. There are, however, certain heredi-
ties which come down to us which our writings
of the present day may be traced to. I, for in-
stance, read the Walpole Letters when I was a

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boy. I absorbed them, gathered in their grace,
wit, and humor, and put them away to be used
by-and-by. One does that so unconsciously with
things one really likes. I am reminded now of
what use those letters have been to me.

They must not claim credit in America for what
was really written in another form so long ago.
They must only claim that I trimmed this, that,
and the other, and so changed their appearance
as to make them seem to be original. You now
see what modesty I have in stock. But it has
taken long practice to get it there.

But I must not stand here talking. I merely
meant to get up and give my thanks for the pleas-
ant things that preceding speakers have said
of me. I wish also to extend ftiy thanks to the
Authors' Club for constituting me a member, at
a reasonable price per year, and for giving me
the benefit of your legal adviser.

I believe you keep a lawyer. I have always kept
a lawyer, too, though I have never made any-
thing out of him. It is service to an author to „j
have a lawyer. There is something so disagreeable
in having a personal contact with a publisher.
So it is better to work through a lawyer — and lose
your case. I understand that the publishers
have been meeting together also like us. I don't
know what for, but possibly they are devising new
and mysterious ways for remunerating authors. I
only wish now to thank you for electing me a

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AUTHORS' CLUB

member of this club — I believe I have paid my
dues — and to thank you again for the pleasant
things you have said of me.

Last February, when Rudyard Kipling was ill
in America, the sympathy which was poured out
to him was genuine and sincere, and I believe that
which cost Kipling so much will bring England
and America closer together. I have been proud
and pleased to see this growing affection and
respect between the two countries. I hope it will
continue to grow, and, please God, it will continue
to grow. I trust we authors will leave to pos-
terity, if we have nothing else to leave, a friend-
ship between England and America that will count
for much. I will now confess that I have been
engaged for the past eight days in compiling a
publication. I have brought it here to lay at
your feet. I do not ask your indulgence in pre-
senting it, but for your applause.

Here it is: "Since England and America may
be joined together in Kipling, may they not be
severed in 'Twain.'"

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BOOKSELLERS /

Address at banquet on Wednesday evening, May 20,
1908, of the American Booksellers' Association, which
included most of the leading booksellers of America, held
at the rooms of the Aldine Association, New York.

THIS annual gathering of booksellers from all
over America comes together ostensibly to
eat and drink, but really to discuss business;
therefore I am required to talk shop. I am re-
quired to furnish a statement of the indebtedness
under which I lie to you gentlemen for your help
in enabling me to earn my living. For something
over forty years I have acquired my bread by print,
beginning with The Innocents Abroad, followed at
intervals of a year or so by Roughing It, Tom
Sawyer, Gilded Age, and so on. For thirty-six
years my books were sold by subscription. You
are not interested in those years, but only in the
four which have since followed. The books
passed into the hands of my present publishers
at the beginning of 1904, and you then became
the provi4ers of my diet. I think I may say,
without flattering you, that you have done ex-
ceedingly well by me. Exceedingly well is not

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BOOKSELLERS

too strong a phrase, since the official statistics
show that in four years you have sold twice as
many volumes of my venerable books as my con-
tract with my publishers bound you and them to
sell in five years. To your sorrow you are aware
that frequently, much too frequently, when a
book gets to be five or ten years old its annual
sale shrinks to two or three hundred copies, and
after an added ten or twenty years ceases to sell.
But you sell thousands of my moss-backed old
books every year — the youngest of them being
books that range from fifteen to twenty-seven
years old, and the oldest reaching back to thirty-
five and forty.

By the terms of my contract my publishers had
to account to me for 50,000 volumes per year for
five years, and pay me for them whether they
sold them or not. It is at this point that you
gentlemen come in, for it was your business to
unload 250,000 volumes upon the public in five
years if you possibly could. Have you succeeded ?
Yes, you have — and more. For in four years,
with a year still to spare, you have sold the
250,000 volumes, and 240,000 besides.

Your sales have increased each year. In the
first year you sold 90,328; in the second year,
104,851; in the third, 133,975; in the fourth year
— which was last year — you sold 160,000. The
aggregate for the four years is 500,000 volumes,
lacking 11,000.

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Of the oldest book, The Innocents Abroad, — now
forty years old — you sold upward of 46,000 copies
in the four years; of Roughing It — now thirty-
eight years old, I think — you sold 40,334; of
Tom Sawyer, 41,000. And so on.

And there is one thing that is peculiarly grati-
fying to me: the Personal Recollections of Joan of
Arc is a serious book; I wrote it for love, and
never expected it to sell, but you have pleasantly
disappointed me in that matter. In your hands
its sale has increased each year. In 1904 you sold
1726 copies; in 1905, 2445; in 1906, 5381; and
last year, 6574.

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"MARK TWAIN'S FIRST APPEARANCE"

On October 5, 1906, Mr. Clemens, following a musical
recital by his daughter in Norfolk, Conn., addressed
her audience on the subject of stage-fright. He thanked
the people for making things as easy as possible for his
daughter's American dibut as a contralto, and then told
of his first experience before the public.

MY heart goes out in sympathy to any one who
. is making his first appearance before an
audience of human beings. By a direct process
of memory I go back forty years, less one month —
for I'm older than I look.

I recall the occasion of my first appearance.
San Francisco knew me then only as a reporter,
and I was to make my bow to San Francisco as a
lecturer. I knew that nothing short of com-
pulsion would get me to the theatre. So I bound
myself by a hard-and-fast contract so that I could
not escape. I got to the theatre forty-five min-
utes before the hour set for the lecture. My knees
were shaking so that I didn't know whether I
could stand up. If there is an awful, horrible
malady in the world, it is stage-fright — and sea-
sickness. They are a pair. I had stage - fright

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then for the first and last time. I was only sea-
sick once, too. It was on a little ship on which
there were two hundred other passengers. I —
was — sick. I was so sick that there wasn't any
left for those other two hundred passengers.

It was dark and lonely behind the scenes in
that theatre, and I peeked through the little peek-
holes they have in theatre curtains and looked into
the big auditorium. That was dark and empty,
too. By-and-by it lighted up, and the audience
began to arrive.

I had got a number of friends of mine, stalwart
men, to sprinkle themselves through the audience
armed with big clubs. Every time I said any-
thing they could possibly guess I intended to be
funny they were to pound those clubs on the floor.
Then there was a kind lady in a box up there, also
a good friend of mine, the wife of the Governor.
She was to watch me intently, and whenever I
glanced toward her she was going to deliver a
gubernatorial laugh that would lead the whole
audience into applause.

At last I began. I had the manuscript tucked
under a United States flag in front of me where
I could get at it in case of need. But I managed
to get started without it. I walked up and down
— I was young in those days and needed the ex-
ercise — and talked and talked.

Right in the middle of the speech I had placed a
gem. I had put in a moving, pathetic part which

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"FIRST APPEARANCE"

was to get at the hearts and souls of my hearers.
When I delivered it they did just what I hoped
and expected. They sat silent and awed. I had
touched them. Then I happened to glance up at
the box where the Governor's wife was — you know
what happened.

Well, after the first agonizing five minutes, my
stage-fright left me, never to return. I know if I
was going to be hanged I could get up and make a
good showing, and I intend to. But I shall never
forget my feelings before the agony left me, and I
got up here to thank you for her for helping my
daughter, by your kindness, to live through her
first appearance. And I want to thank you for
your appreciation of her singing, which is, by-the^
way, hereditary.

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MORALS AND MEMORY

Mr. Clemens was the guest of honor at a reception held
at Barnard College (Columbia University), March 7,
1906, by the Barnard Union. One of the young ladies
presented Mr. Clemens, and thanked him for his
amiability in coming to make them an address. She
closed with the expression of the great joy it gave her
fellow-collegians, "because we all love you." 9

IF any one here loves me, she has my sincere
thanks. Nay, if any one here is so good as
to love me — why, I'll be a brother to her. She
shall have my sincere, warm, unsullied affection
When I was coming up in the car with the ver>
kind young lady who was delegated to show me
the way, she asked me what I was going to talk
about. And I said I wasn't sure. I said I had
some illustrations, and I was going to bring them
in. I said I was certain to give those illustrations,
but that I hadn't the faintest notion what they
were going to illustrate.

Now, I've been thinking it over in this forest
glade [indicating the woods of Arcady on the
scene setting], and I've decided to work then) in.
with something about morals and the caprices

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of memory. That seems to me to be a pretty
good subject. You see, everybody JyasB. memory \/
and it's pretty sure to have caprices. And, of
course, everybody has morals.

It's my opinion that every one I know has
morals, though I wouldn't like to ask. I know \j
I have. But I'd rather teach them than prac-
tice them any day. "Give them to others" —
that's my motto. Then you never have any use
for them when you're left without. Now, speak-
ing of the caprices of memory in general, and of
mine in particular, it's strange to think of all the
tricks this little mental process plays on us. Here
we're endowed with a faculty of mind that ought
to be more supremely serviceable to us than them
all. And what happens? This memory of ours
stores up a perfect record of the most useless facts
and anecdotes and experiences. And all the
things that we ought to know — that we need to
know — that we'd profit by knowing — it casts
aside with the careless indifference of a girl
refusing her true lover. It's terrible to think of
this phenomenon. I tremble in all my mem-
bers when I consider all the really valuable
things that I've forgotten in seventy years —
when I meditate upon the caprices of my mem-
ory.

There's a bird out in California that is one per-
fect symbol of the human memory. I've for-
gotten the bird's name (just because it would be

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valuable for me to know it — to recall it to your
own minds, perhaps).

But this fool of a creature goes around collect-
ing the most ridiculous things you can imagine
and storing them up. He never selects a thing
that could ever prove of the slightest help to
him; but he goes about gathering irpn forks,
and spoons, and tin cans, and broken mouse-traps
— all sorts of rubbish that is difficult for him to
carry and yet be any use when he gets it. Why,
that bird will go by a gold watch to bring back
one of those patent cake-pans.

Now, my mind is just like that, and my mind
isn't very different from yours — and so our minds
are just like that bird. We pass by what would
be of inestimable value to us, and pack our mem-
ories with the most trivial odds and ends that
never by any chance, under any circumstances
whatsoever, could be of the slightest use to any
one.

Now, things that I have remembered are con-
stantly popping into my head. And I am re-
peatedly startled by the vividness with which
they recur to me after the lapse of years and their
utter uselessness in being remembered at all.

I was thinking over some on my way up here.
They were the illustrations I spoke about to the
young lady on the way up. And I've come to the
conclusion, curious though it is, that I can use every
one of these freaks of memory to teach you all

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a lesson. I'm convinced that each one has its
moral. And I think it's my duty to hand the
moral on to you.

Now, I recall that when I was a boy I was a
good boy — I was a very good boy. Why, I was
the best boy in my school. I was the best boy
in that In tie Mississippi town where I lived. The
population was only about twenty million. You
may not believe it, but I was the best boy in that
State — and in the United States, for that matter.

But I don't know why I never heard any one
say that but myself. I always recognized it.
But even those nearest and dearest to me couldn't
seem to see it. My mother, especially, seemed to
think there was something wrong with that esti-
mate. And she never got over that prejudice.

Now, when my mother got to be eighty-five
years old her memory failed her. She forgot lit-
tle threads that hold life's patches of meaning
together. She was living out West then, and I
went on to visit her.

I hadn't seen my mother in a year or so. And
when I got there she knew my face ; knew I was
married; knew I had a family, and that I was
living with them. But she couldn't, for the life of
her, tell my name or who I was. So I told her
I was her boy.

"But you don't live with me," she said.

"No," said I, "I'm living in Rochester."

"What are you doing there?"
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"Going to school."

"Large school?"

"Very large."

"All boys?"

"All boys."

"And how do you stand?" said my mother.

"I'm the best boy in that school," I answered.

"Well," said my mother, with a return of her
old fire, "I'd like to know what the other boys
are like."

Now, one point in this story is the fact that
my mother's mind went back to my school days,
and remembered my little youthful self-prejudice
when she'd forgotten everything else about me.

The other point is the moral. There's one
there that you will find if you search for it.

Now, here's something else I remember. It's
about the first time I ever stole a watermelon.
"Stole" is a strong word. Stole? Stole? No,
I don't mean that. It was the first time I ever
withdrew a watermelon. It was the first time I
ever extracted a watermelon. That is exactly
the word I want — "extracted." It is definite.
It is precise. It perfectly conveys my idea. Its
use in dentistry connotes the delicate shade of
meaning I am looking for. You know we never
extract our own teeth.

And it was not my watermelon that I extracted.
I extracted that watermelon from a fanner's
wagon while he was inside negotiating with an-

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other customer. I carried that watermelon to
one of the secluded recesses of the lumber-yard,
and there I broke it open.

It was a green watermelon.

Well, do you know when I saw that I began to
feel sorry — sorry — sorry. It seemed to me that
I had done wrong. I reflected deeply. I re-
flected that I was young — I think I was just
eleven. But I knew that though immature I
did not lack moral advancement. I knew what
a boy ought to do who had extracted a water-
melon — like that.

I considered George Washington, and what ac-
tion he would have taken under similar circum-
stances. Then I knew there was just one thing
to make me feel right inside, and that was —
Restitution.

So I said to myself: "I will do that. I will take
that green watermelon back where I got it from."
And the minute I had said it I felt that great
moral uplift that comes to you when you've made
a noble resolution.

So I gathered up the biggest fragments, and I
carried them back to the farmer's wagon, and I
restored the watermelon — what was left of it.
And I made him give me a good one in place of
it, too.

And I told him he ought to be ashamed of him-
self going around working off his worthless, old,
green watermelons on trusting purchasers who
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had to rely on him. How could they tell from
the outside whether the melons were good or not ?
That was his business. And if he didn't reform,
I told him I'd see that he didn't get any more of
my trade — nor anybody else's I knew, if I could
^ help it. .„ J

You know that man was as contrite as a re-
vivalist's last convert. He said he was all broken
up to think I'd gotten a green watermelon. He
promised me he would never carry another green
watermelon if he starved for it. And he drove
off — a better man.

Now, do you see what I did for that man ? He
was on a downward path, and I rescued him. But
all I got out of it was a watermelon.

Yet I'd rather have that memory — just that
memory of the good I did for that depraved
farmer — than all the material gain you can think
of. Look at the lesson he got! I never got any-
thing like that from it. But I ought to be satis-
fied. I was only eleven years old, but I secured
everlasting benefit to other people.

The moral in this is perfectly clear, and I think
there's one in the next memory I'm going to tell
you about.

To go back to my childhood, there's another
little incident that comes to me from which you
can draw even another moral. It's about one
of the times I went fishing. You see, in our house
there was a sort of family prejudice against going

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fishing if you hadn't permission. But it would
frequently be bad judgment to ask. So I went
fishing secretly, as it were — way up the Mississippi.
It was an exquisitely happy trip, I recall, with a
very pleasant sensation.

Well, while I was away there was a tragedy in
our town. A stranger, stopping over on his way
East from California, was stabbed to death in an
unseemly brawl.

Now, my father was justice of the peace, and N
because he was justice of the peace he was coroner ;
and since he was coroner he was also constable ;
and being constable he was sheriff; and out of
consideration for his holding the office of sheriff
he was likewise county clerk and a dozen other
officials I don't think of just this minute.

I thought he had power of life or death, only
he didn't use it over other boys. He was sort of
an austere man. Somehow I didn't like being
round him when I'd done anything he disap-
proved of. So that's the reason I wasn't often
around.

Well, when this gentleman got knifed they
communicated with the proper authority, the
coroner, and they laid the corpse out in the
coroner's office — our front sitting-room — in prep-
aration for the inquest the next morning.

About 9 or ro o'clock I got back from fishing.

It was a little too late for me to be received by

•my folks, so I took my shoes off and slipped

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noiselessly up the back way to the sitting-room.
I was very tired, and I didn't wish to disturb my
people. So I groped my way to the sofa and
lay down.

Now, I didn't know anything of what had hap-
pened during my absence. But I was sort of
nervous on my own account — afraid of being
caught, and rather dubious about the morning
affair. And I had been lying there a few moments
when my eyes gradually got used to the darkness,
and I became aware of something on the other
side of the room.

It was something foreign to the apartment.
It had an uncanny appearance. And I sat up
looking very hard, and wondering what in heaven
this long, formless, vicious-looking thing might be.

First I thought I'd go and see. Then I thought,
"Never mind that."

Mind you, I had no cowardly sensations what-
ever, but it didn't seem exactly prudent to in-
vestigate. But I somehow couldn't keep my
eyes off the thing. And the more I looked at it
the more disagreeably it grew on me. But I was
resolved to play the man. So I decided to turn
over and count a hundred, and let the patch of
moonlight creep up and show me what the dickens
it was.

Well, I turned over and tried to count, but I
couldn't keep my mind on it. I kept thinking of
that grewsome mass. I was losing count all the

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MORALS AND MEMORY

time, and going back and beginning over again.
Oh no; I wasn't frightened — just annoyed. But
by the time I'd gotten to the century mark I
turned cautiously over and opened my eyes with
great fortitude.

The moonlight revealed to me a marble-white
human hand. Well, maybe I wasn't embarrassed !
But then that changed to a creepy feeling again,
and I thought I'd try the counting again. I
don't know how many hours or weeks it was that
I lay there counting hard. But the moonlight
crept up that white arm, and it showed me a lead
face and a terrible wound over the heart.

I could scarcely say that I was terror-stricken
or anything like that. But somehow his eyes
interested me so that I went right out of the
window. I didn't need the sash. But it seemed
easier to take it than leave it behind.

Now, let that teach you a lesson — I don't know
just what it is. But at seventy years old I find
that memory of peculiar value to me. I have
been unconsciously guided by it all these years. *
Things that seemed pigeon-holed and remote are /
a perpetual influence. Yes, you're taught in so /
many ways. tAnd you're so felicitously taught j^P NJ
when you don't knowltj ^ — J

Here's something else that taught me a good
deal.

When I was seventeen I was very bashful, and
a sixteen-year-old girl came to stay a week with

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us. She was a peach, and I was seized with a
happiness not of this world.

One evening my mother suggested that, to en-
tertain her, I take her to the theatre. I didn't
really like to, because I was seventeen and sensi-
tive about appearing in the streets with a girl. I
couldn't see my way to enjoying my delight in
public. But we went.

I didn't feel very happy. I couldn't seem to
keep my mind on the play. I became conscious,
after a while, that that was due less to my lovely
company than my boots. They were sweet to
look upon, as smooth as skin, but fitted ten times
as close. I got oblivious to the play and the girl
and the other people and everything but my boots
until — I hitched one partly off. The sensation
was sensuously perfect. I couldn't help it. I had
to get the other off, partly. Then I was obliged
to get them off altogether, except that I kept my
feet in the legs so they couldn't get away.

From that time I enjoyed the play. But the first
thing I knew the curtain came down, like that,
without my notice, and I hadn't any boots on.
What's more, they wouldn't go on. I tugged
strenuously. And the people in our row got up
and fussed and said things until the peach and I
simply had to move on.

We moved — the girl on one arm and the boots
under the other. *

We walked home that way, sixteen blockslwith
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a retinue a mile lon g)] Every time we passed a
lamp-post death griped me at the throat. But
we got home — and I had on white socks.

If I live to be nine hundred and ninety-nine
years old I don't suppose I could ever forget that
walk. I remember it about as keenly as the
chagrin I suffered on another occasion.

At one time in our domestic history we had a
colored butler who had a failing. He could never
remember to ask people who came to the door
to state their business. So I used to suffer a good
many calls unnecessarily.

One morning when I was especially busy he
brought me a card engraved with a name I did
not know. So I said, "What does he wish to see
me for?" and Sylvester said, "Ah couldn't ask
him, sah; he wuz a genlmun." "Return in-
stantly/ ' I thundered, "and inquire his mission.
Ask him what's his game." Well, Sylvester re-
turned with the announcement that he had light-
ning-rods to sell. "Indeed," said I, "things are
coming to a fine pass when lightning-rod agents
send up engraved cards." "He has pictures,"
added Sylvester. * ' Pictures, indeed ! He may be
peddling etchings. Has he a Russia leather case ?"
But Sylvester was too frightened to remember.
I said, "I am going down to make it hot for that
upstart!"

I went down the stairs, working up my temper
all the way. When I got to the parlor I was in a

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fine frenzy concealed beneath a veneer of frigid
courtesy. And when I looked in the door, sure
enough he had a Russia leather case in his hand.
But I didn't happen to notice that it was our
Russia leather case.

And if you'd believe me, that man was sitting
with a whole gallery of etchings spread out before
him. But I didn't happen to notice that they
were our etchings, spread out by some member of
my family for some unguessed purpose.

Very curtly I asked the gentleman his business.
With a surprised, timid manner he faltered that
he had met my wife and daughter at Onteora,
and they had asked him to call. Fine lie, I
thought, and I froze him.

He seemed to be kind of .nonplussed, and sat
there fingering the etchings in the case until I
told him he needn't bother, because we had those.
That pleased him so much that he leaned over, in
an embarrassed way, to pick up another from the
floor. But I stopped him. I said, "We've got
that, too." He seemed pitifully amazed, but I
was congratulating myself on my great success.

Finally the gentleman asked where Mr. Winton
lived; he'd met him in the mountains, too. So I
said I'd show him gladly. And I did on the spot.
And when he was gone I felt queer, because there
were all his etchings spread out on the floor.

Well, my wife came in and asked me who had
been in. I showed her the card, and told her all

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exultantly. To my dismay she nearly fainted.
She told me he had been a most kind friend to
them in the country, and had forgotten to tell me
that he was expected our way. And she pushed
me out of the door, and commanded me to get over
to the Wintons in a hurry and get him back.

I came into the drawing-room, where Mrs.
Winton was sitting up very stiff in a chair, beating
me at my own game. Well, I began to put an-
other light on things. Before many seconds Mrs.
Winton saw it was time to change her temperature.
In five minutes I had asked the man to luncheon,
and she to dinner, and so on.

We made that fellow change his trip and stay
a week, and we gave him the time of his life.
Why, I don't believe we let him get sober the
whole time.

I trust that you will carry away some good
thought from these lessons I have given you, and
that the memory of them will inspire you to higher
things, and elevate you to plans far above the
old — and — and —

And I tell you one thing, young ladies: I've
had a better time with you to-day than with that
peach fifty-three years ago.

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QUEEN VICTORIA

Address to the British Schools and Universities
Club, at Delmonico's, Monday, May 25,
1908, in Honor op Queen Vic-
toria's Birthday

Mr. Clemens told the story of his duel with a rival
editor: how he practised firing at a barn door and
failed to hit it, but a friend of his took off the head of
a little bird at thirty-five yards and attributed the shot
to Mark Twain. The duel did not take place. Mr.
Clemens continued as follows:

IT also happened that I was the means of stop-
ping duelling in Nevada, for a law was passed
sending all duellists to jail for two years, and
the Governor, hearing of my marksmanship, said
that if he got me I should go to prison for the full
term. That's why I left Nevada, and I have not
been there since.

You do me a high honor, indeed, in selecting me
to speak of my country in this commemoration
of the birthday of that noble lady whose life was
consecrated to the virtues and the humanities and
to the promotion of lofty ideals, and was a model
upon which many a humbler life was formed and

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QUEEN VICTORIA

made beautiful while she lived, and upon which
many such lives will still be formed in the genera-
tions that are to come — a life which finds its just
image in the star which falls out of its place in the
sky and out of existence, but whose light still
streams with unfaded lustre across the abysses
of space long after its fires have been extinguished
at their source.

As a woman the Queen was all that the most
exacting standards could require. As a far-reach-
ing and effective beneficent moral force she had
no peer in her time among either monarchs or
commoners. As a monarch she was without re-
proach in her great office. We may not venture,
perhaps, to say so sweeping a thing as this in cold
blood about any monarch that preceded her upon
either her own throne or upon any other. It is a
colossal eulogy, but it is justified.

In those qualities of the heart which beget af-
fection in all sorts and conditions of men she was
rich, surprisingly rich, and for this she will still
be remembered and revered in the far-off ages
when the political glories of her reign shall have
faded from vital history and fallen to a place in
that scrap-heap of unverifiable odds and ends
which we call tradition. Which is to say, in
briefer phrase, that her name will live always.
And with it her character — a fame rare in the
history of thrones, dominions, principalities, and
powers, since it will not rest upon harvested selfish

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and sordid ambitions, but upon love, earned and
freely vouchsafed. She mended broken hearts
where she could, but she broke none.

What she did for us in America in our time of
storm and stress we shall not forget, and when-
ever we call it to mind we shall always remember
the wise and righteous mind that guided her in it
and sustained and supported her — Prince Albert's.
We need not talk any idle talk here to-night about
either possible or impossible war between the two
countries; there will be no war while we remain
sane and the son of Victoria and Albert sits upon
the throne. In conclusion, I believe I may justly
claim to utter the voice of my country in saying
that we hold him in deep honor, and also in cor-
dially wishing him a long life and a happy reign.

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JOAN OF ARC

Address at the Dinner op the Society op Illus-
trators, Given at the Aldine Associa-
tion Club, December 22, 1905

Just before Mr. Clemens made his speech, a young
woman attired as Joan of Arc, with a page bearing
her flag of battle, courtesied reverently and tendered Mr.
Clemens a laurel wreath on a satin pillow. He tried
to speak, but his voice failed from excess of emotion.
" I thank you!** he finally exclaimed, and, pulling him-
self together, he began his speech.

NOW there is an illustration [pointing to the
retreating Joan of Arc]. That is exactly
what I wanted — precisely what I wanted — when I
was describing to myself Joan of Arc, after study-
ing her history and her character for twelve years
diligently.

That was the product — not the conventional
Joan of Arc. Wherever you find the conventional
Joan of Arc in history she is an offence to anybody
who knows the story of that wonderful girl.

Why, she was — she was almost supreme in
several details. She had a marvellous intellect;
she had a great heart, had a noble spirit, was absch

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Jutely pure in her character, her feeling, her lan-
guage, her words, her everything — she was only
eighteen years old.

Now put that heart into such a breast — eighteen
years old — and give it that masterly intellect
which showed in the face, and furnish it with that
almost god-like spirit, and what are you going to
have? The conventional Joan of Arc? Not by
any means. That is impossible. I cannot com-
prehend any such thing as that.

You must have a creature like that young and
fair and beautiful girl we just saw. And her
spirit must look out of the eyes. The figure
should be — the figure should be in harmony with
all that, but, oh, what we get in the conventional
picture, and it is always the conventional picture!

I hope you will allow me to say that your guild,
when you take the conventional, you have got it
at second-hand. Certainly, if you had studied
and studied, then you might have something else
as a result, but when you have the common con-
vention you stick to that.

You cannot prevail upon the artist to do it;
he always gives you a Joan of Arc — that lovely
creature that started a great career at thirteen,
but whose greatness arrived when she was eigh-
teen; and merely because she was a girl he can-
not see the divinity in her, and so he paints a
peasant, a coarse and lubberly figure — the figure
of a cotton-bale, and he clothes that in the coarsest

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raiment of the peasant region — just like a fish-
woman, her hair cropped short like a Russian*
peasant, and that face of hers, which should be
beautiful and which should radiate all the glories
which are in the spirit and in her heart — that ex-
pression in that face is always just the fixed ex-
pression of a ham.

But now Mr. Beard has intimated a moment ago,
and so has Sir Purdon-Clarke also, that the artist,
the illustrator, does not often get the idea of the
man whose book he is illustrating. Here is a very
remarkable instance of the other thing in Mr.
Beard, who illustrated a book of mine. You may
never have heard of it. I will tell you about it
now — A Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

Now, Beard got everything that I put into that
book and a little more besides. Those pictures of
Beard's in that book — oh, from the first page to
the last is one vast sardonic laugh at the triviali-
ties, the servilities of our poor human race, and
also at the professions and the insolence of priest-
craft and kingcraft — those creatures that make
slaves of themselves and have not the manliness
to shake it off. Beard put it all in that book. I
meant it to be there. I put a lot of it there and
Beard put the rest.

That publisher of mine in Hartford had an eye
for the pennies, and he saved them. He did not
waste any on the illustrations. He had a very
good artist — Williams — who had never taken a

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lesson in drawing. Everything he did was
original. The publisher hired the cheapest wood-
engraver he could find, and in my early books
you can see a trace of that. You can see that if
Williams had had a chance he would have made
some very good pictures. He had a good heart
and good intentions.

I had a character in the first book he illustrated
— The Innocents Abroad. That was a boy seven-
teen or eighteen years old — Jack Van Nostrand
— a New York boy, who, to my mind, was a very
remarkable creature. He and I tried to get
Williams to understand that boy, and make
a picture of Jack that would be worthy of
Jack.

Jack was a most singular combination. He
was born and reared in New York here. He was
as delicate in his feelings, as clean and pure and
refined in his feelings as any lovely girl that ever
was, but whenever he expressed a feeling he did
it in Bowery slang, and it was a most curious com-
bination — that delicacy of his and that apparent
coarseness. There was no coarseness inside of
Jack at all, and Jack, in the course of seventeen
or eighteen years, had acquired a capital of igno-
rance that was marvellous — ignorance of various
things, not of all things. For instance, he did not
know anything about the Bible. He had never
been in Sunday-school. Jack got more out of the
Holy Land than anybody else, because the others

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knew what they were expecting, but it was a land
of surprises to him.

I said in the book that we found him watching a
turtle on a log, stoning that turtle, and he was
stoning that turtle because he had read that "The
song of the turtle was heard in the land," and this
turtle wouldn't sing. It sounded absurd, but it
was charged on Jack as a fact, and as he went
along through that country he had a proper foil
in an old rebel colonel, who was superintendent
and head engineer in a large Sunday-school in
Wheeling, West Virginia. That man was full of
enthusiasm wherever he went, and would stand
and deliver himself of speeches, and Jack would
listen to those speeches of the colonel and wonder.

Jack had made a trip as a child almost across
this continent in the first overland stage-coach.
That man's name who ran that line of stages —
well, I declare that name is gone. Well, names
will go.

Halliday — ah, that's the name — Ben Halli-
day, your uncle [turning to Mr. Carnegie].
That was the fellow — Ben Halliday — and
Jack was full of admiration at the prodigious
speed that that line of stages made — and it was
good speed — one hundred and twenty-five miles
a day, going day and night, and it was the event
of Jack's life, and there at the Fords of the Jordan
the colonel was inspired to a speech (he was
always making a speech), so he called us up to
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him. He called up five sinners and thi-efe sdints.
It has been only lately that Mr. Carnegie beati-
fied me. Arid he said : * ' Herb are the Fords of the
Jordan — a monumental place. At this very
point, when Moses brought the children of Isralel
through — he brought the children of Israel frditi
Egypt through the desert you see thiere — he
guarded thein through that desiert patiently,
patiently during forty years, and brtiUghfc them
to this spot safe and sound. Thete yoii see —
there is the scene of what Moses did."

Arid Jack said: "Moses Who?' '

"Oh," he says, "Jack, you ought hot to ask
that! Moses, the great law-giver! Moses, the
great patriot! Moses, the great warrior! Moses,
the great guide, who, as I tell you, brought these
people through these three hundred miles of
satid in forty years, and landed them safe and
sound."

Jack said: "There's nothin' in that three
hundred miles in forty years. Ben Halliday
would have snaked 'em through in thirty -six
hours."

Well, I was speaking of Jack's innbcence, and
it was beautiful. Jack was not ijgnorant oh all
subjects. That boy was a deep studerit in the
history of Anglo-Saxon liberty, and he was a
patriot all the way through to the marrow. There
was a subject that interested him all tlfe time.
Other subjects were of rio concern to Jack, but

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ijjat quaint, inscrutable iqnpcence of his I could
not get William^ to put ijatp the picture.

Yes, Williams wanted tp do it. Hp said: "I
will make him as innocent as a virgin." He
thought a moment, and then said, "I will make
him as innocent as an unborn virgin," which cov-
ered the ground.

I was reminded of Jack because I came across
a Jefter to-day wh;ch Js over thirty years oJ4 #iat
J^ck wrote. Jack was doomed to consumption.
He was vejy lqqg and slim, poor creature, and
in a year or tyro after {ie gqt bacjc from tha£ ex-
cursion to the Holy Land he wep% on a rjcfe on
horseback through Colorado, and he did not |^sf
tni}; 9, ypar pr two.

He wro£e this letter, not fq qie> but £p a ffiend
of mine, and he said: "J fiavq ridden Jiorsetfack"
— fhfs was three ye^rs after — "I have ridden
J}orsqf>^pk four hundred miles through a desert
country where yotj. never see anything but cattje
now and then, and now and then a cattle station —
ten miles apart, twenty miles apart. Now you
tell Clemeru that in all that stretch of four hun-
dred miles I have seen only two books — the Bible
and Innocents Abroad. Tell Clemens the Bible
was in a very good condition."

I say that he had studied, and he had, the real
Saxon liberty, the acquirement of our liberty,
and Jack used to repeat some verses — I don't
know where they came from, but I thought of

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them to-day when I saw that letter — that that
boy could have been talking of himself in those
quoted lines from that unknown poet:

" For he had sat at Sidney's feet

And walked with him in plain apart,
And through the centuries heard the beat
Of Freedom's march through Cromwell's heart."

And he was that kind of a boy. He should have
lived, and yet he should not have lived, because
he died at that early age — he couldn't have been
more than twenty — he had seen all there was to
see in the world that was worth the trouble of
living in it; he had seen all of this world that is
valuable; he had seen all of this world that was
illusion, and illusion is the only valuable thing in

v it. He had arrived at that point where presently
the illusions would cease and he would have en-^
tered upon the realities of life, and God help the

I man that has arrived at that point.

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ACCIDENT INSURANCE— ETC. /

Delivered in Hartford, at a Dinner to Cornelius
Walpord, qp London

GENTLEMEN,— I am glad, indeed, to assist
in welcoming the distinguished guest of this
occasion to a city whose fame as an insurance
centre has extended to all lands, and given us the
name of being a quadruple band of brothers work-
ing sweetly hand in hand — the Colt's arms com-
pany making the destruction of our race easy and
convenient, our life-insurance citizens paying for
the victims when they pass away, Mr. Batterson
perpetuating their memory with his stately monu-
ments, and our fire-insurance comrades taking
care of their hereafter. I am glad to assist in
welcoming our guest — first, because he is an Eng-
lishman, and I owe a heavy debt of hospitality
to certain of his fellow-countrymen; and secondly,
because he is in sympathy with insurance, and has
been the means of making many other men cast
their sympathies in the same direction.

Certainly there is no nobler field for human
effort than the insurance line of business — espe-
cially accident insurance. Ever since I have been

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a director in &n accident-insurance company I
have felt that I am a better man. Life has seemed
more precious. Accidents have assumed a kind-
lier aspect. Distressing special providences have
lost half their horror. I look upon a cripple now
with affectionate interest — as an advertisement.
I do not seem to care for poetry any more. I do
not care for politics — even agriculture does not
excite me. But to me now there is a charm about
a railway collision that is unspeakable.

There is nothing more beneficent than accident
insurance. I have seen an entire family lifted
out of poverty and into affluence by the siihple
boon of a broken leg. I have had people cotiife to
me on crutches, with tears in their eyes, to bless
this beneficent institution. In all irly experience
of life, I have seen nothing so seraphic as the took
that conies into a freshly niutilated frian's fate
when he feels in his vest pocket with his remain-
ing hand and finds his accident ticket all right.
And I have seeh ilothihg so sad as the look that
came into another splintered customer's face when
he found he couldn't collect on la wooden leg.
r I will remark here, by way of advertisement,
/ that that noble charity which we have naihed the
I Hartford Accident Insurance Company* is an
^institution Which is peculiarly to be dfepeiidfed
upon. A man is bound to prosper who gives it
his custom. No man c&a take out a policy ih it

* The speaker was a director of the company named.
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and not get crippled before the year is out. Now
there was one indigent man who had been disap-
pointed so often with other companies that he
had grownxiisheartened, his appetite left him, he
ceased to smile — said life was but a weariness.
Three weeks ago I got him to insure with us, and
now he is the brightest, happiest spirit in this
land — has a good steady income and a stylish suit
of new bandages every day, and travels aroujid
on a shutter.

I will s$y, in conclusion, that my share of the
welcome to our guest is none the less hearty be-
cause I talk so much nonsense, and I know that
I cat} say the same for the rest of the speakers.

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OSTEOPATHY J

On February 27, 1901, Mr. Clemens appeared before
the Assembly Committee in Albany, New York, in
favor of the Seymour bill legalizing the practice of'
osteopathy.

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN,— Dr.
I Van Fleet is the gentleman who gave me
the character. I have heard my character dis-
cussed a thousand times before you were born,
sir, and shown the iniquities in it, and you did not
get more than half of them.

I was touched and distressed when they brought
that part of a child in here, and proved that you
cannot take a child to pieces in that way. What
remarkable names those diseases have ! It makes
me envious of the man that has them all. I have
had many diseases, and am thankful for all I have
had.

One of the gentlemen spoke of the knowledge
of something else found in Sweden, a treatment
which I took. It is, I suppose, a kindred thing.
There is apparently no great difference between
them. I was a year and a half in London and
Sweden, in the hands of that grand old man, Mr.
Kildren.

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OSTEOPATHY

I cannot call him a doctor, for he has not the
authority to give a certificate if a patient should
die, but fortunately they don't.

The State stands as a mighty Gibraltar clothed
with power. It stands between me and my body,
and tells me what kind of a doctor I must employ.
vyWhen my soul is sick unlimited spiritual liberty
is given me by the State. Now then, it doesn't
seem logical that the State shall depart from this
great policy, the health of the soul, and change
about and take the other position in the matter
of smaller consequence — the health of the body.

The Bell bill limitations would drive the osteo-
paths out of the State. Oh, dear me! when you
drive somebody out of the State you create the
same condition as prevailed in the Garden of Eden. .
You want the thing that you can't have. I
didn't care much about the osteopaths, but as
soon as I found they were going to drive them out
I got in a state of uneasiness, and I can't sleep
nights now.

I know how Adam felt in the Garden of -Eden
about the prohibited apple. Adam didn't want
the apple till he found out he couldn't have it,
just as he would have wanted osteopathy if he
couldn't have it.

Whose property is my body? Probably mine.
I so regard it. If I experiment with it, who must
be answerable? I, not the State. If I choose
injudiciously, does the State die ? Oh no.

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I wqs the subject of my pother's experiment.
She was wisp. She made experiments cat^ipusjy.
She didn't pick out just any child ip the flock.
Np, she chose judipiously. She chose one she
could spare, and she couldn't spare the others. I
was the choice child pf the flock, so I had to take
all of the experiments.

In 1844 Kneipp filled the worjd with %he wonder
qf the water cure. Mother wanted to try jt, hut
on sober second thought she put m e through. 4
bucket of ice-water was poure4 over to see the
effect. Then I was rubbed down w}th flannels, a
sheet was dipped in the water, and I ^as p^t to
bed. I perspired so much that mother ptit a life-
preserver to bed with me.

But this had nothing but a spiritual effect on
pae, and I didn't care for that. When they took
off the sheet it was yellow from the output of my
cpnscience, the exudation of sin. It purified me
spiritually, and it remains until this day.

I have experimented with osteopathy and ^Up-
pathy. I tpok a chance at the latter for old times'
sake, for, three times, when a boy, mother's new
methods got me sq near 4eath's door she had to
call in the family physician to ptjll me out.

The physicians think they are mave4 by regard
for the best interests pf the public. Isn't there
a little touch of self-interest back of i% all? It
seems to me there is, and I dpn't claim to haye aX]
the virtues — only nine pr ten of them-

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OSTEOPATHY

I was born in the "Banner State," and by
"Banner State" I mean Missouri. Osteopathy
was born in the same State, and both of us are
getting along reasonably well. At a time during
my younger days my attention was attracted to
a picture of a house Which bore the inscription,
"Christ Disputing with the Doctors."

I couid attach no other meaning to it than that
Christ was actually quarrelling with the doctors.
So I asked an old slave, who was a sort of a herb
doctor in a small way— tirilicensed; of course— whit
the meaning of the picture was. "What hai he
done?" I asked. And the colored man replied:
"Humph, he ain't gdt no license."

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WATER-SUPPLY

Mr. Clemens visited Albany on February 27 and 28,
1 90 1. The privileges of the -floor were granted to him,
and he was asked to make a short address to the Senate.

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN —I
do not know how to thank you sufficiently
for this high honor which you are conferring upon
me. I have for the second time now enjoyed
this kind of prodigal hospitality — in the other
House yesterday, to-day in this one. I am a
modest man, and diffident about appearing before
legislative bodies, and yet utterly and entirely
appreciative of a courtesy like this when it is
extended to me, and I thank you very much for it.
If I had the privilege, which unfortunately
I have not got, of suggesting things to t f e legis-
lators in my individual capacity, I would so enjoy
the opportunity that I would not charge anything
for it at all. I would do that without a salary.
I would give them the benefit of my wisdom and
experience in legislative bodies, and if I could
have had the privilege for a few minutes of giving
advice to the other House I should have liked to,
but of course I could not undertake it, as they

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did not ask me to do it — but if they had only
asked me!

Now that the House is considering a measure
which is to furnish a water-supply to the city of
New York, why, permit me to say I live in New
York myself. I know all about its ways, its
desires, and its residents, and — if I had the privi-
lege — I should have urged them not to weary
themselves over a measure like that to furnish
water to the city of New York, for we never
drink it.

But I will not venture to advise this body, as
I only venture to advise bodies who are not
present.

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MISTAKEN IDENTITY

Address at the Annual "Ladies* Day," Papy-
rus Club, Boston

IADIES AND GENTLEMEN,— I am perfectly
Lf astonished — a-s-t-o-n-i-s-h-e-d — ladips anc}
gentlepien — astonished at the way histojy repeats
itself. I find ipyself situated at this mofpent
exactly and precisely as I was once before, years
ago, to a jot, to a tittle — to a very hair. There
isn't a shade of difference. It is the most astonish-
ing coincidence that ever — but wait. I will tell
you the former instance, and then you will see it
for yourself. Years ago I arrived one day at
Salamanca, New York, eastward bound; must
change cars there and take the sleeper train.
There were crowds of people there, and they
were swarming into the long sleeper train and
pafcking it full, and it was a perfect purgatory of
dust and confusion and gritting of teeth and sdft,
sweet, and low profanity. I asked the young man
in the ticket-office if I could have a sleeping-sec-
tion, and he answered "No," with a snarl that
shrivelled me up like burned leather. I went off,
smarting under this insult to my dignity, and

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Mistaken identity

asked another local official, supplicatingly, if I
couldn't have some poor little corner somewhere
iti d sleeping-car; but he cut me short with a
venomous "No, you can't; every corner is full.
NbW, don't bother me any more"; dnd he ttimed
his back and walked off. My digtiity was in a
state liow which cannot be described. I was so
ruffled that — well, I said to my companion, "If
these people knew who I am they — " But my
companion cut me short there — "Doh't talk such
folly," he said; "if they did know who yoil are,
do you suppdse it would help your high-mighti-
ness to a vacancy in a train which has no vacan-
cies in it?"

This did not improve my condition any to
s£eak 6t , biit just then I dbserVed that the colored
porter of a sleeping-car had his eye on me. I saw
his dark countenance light up. He Whispered to
the uniforifaed conductor, punctUating With nods
and jefks toward me, and straightway this con-
ductor cade forward, oozing politeness from eVery
pfore.

'*Can I bfe of any service to you?" he asked.
"Will you have a place in the sleeper?"

" Yes," I said, "and faiubh obligfe me, too. Give
me anything — anything will dtiswer."

"We have nothing left but the bi£ family state-
room," he continued, "with two berths and a
ctittple of arm-chairs in it, but it is entirely &t your
disposal. Here, Tom, take these satfchels dbdard !"

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Then he touched his hat and we and the colored
Tom moved along. I was bursting to drop just
one little remark to my companion, but I held in
and waited. Tom made us comfortable in that
sumptuous great apartment, and then said, with
many bows and a perfect affluence of smiles :

"Now, is dey anything you want, sah? Case
you kin have jes' anything you wants. It don't
make no difference what it is."

"Can I have some hot water and a tumbler at
nine to-night — blazing hot ?" I asked. "You know
about the right temperature for a hot Scotch
punch?"

"Yes, sah, dat you kin; you kin pen on it; I'll
get it myself."

"Good! Now, that lamp is hung too high. Can
I have a big coach candle fixed up just at the head
of my bed, so that I can read comfortably ?"

"Yes, sah, you kin; I'll fix her up myself, an'
I'll fix her so she'll burn all night. Yes, sah; an'
you can jes' call for anything you want, and dish,
yer whole railroad 'U be turned wrong end up an'
inside out for to get it for you. Dat's so." And
he disappeared.

Well, I tilted my head back, hooked my thumbs
in my armholes, smiled a smile on my companion, .
and said, gently:

"Well, what do you say now?"

My companion was not in the humor to respond,
and didn't. The next moment that smiling black

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MISTAKEN IDENTITY

face was thrust in at the crack of the door, and
this speech followed:

"Laws bless you, sah, I knowed you in a minute.
I told de conductah so. Laws! I knowed you de
minute I sot eyes on you."

"Is that so, my boy?" (Handing him a quad-
ruple fee.) "Who am I?"

"Jenuel McClellan," and he disappeared again.

My companion said, vinegarishly, "Well, well!
what do you say now?" Right there comes in
the marvellous coincidence I mentioned a while
ago — viz., I was speechless, and that is my con-
dition now. Perceive it ?
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CATS AND CANDY ^

The following address was delivered at a social
meeting of literary men in New York in 1874:

WHEN I was fourteen I was living with my
parents, who were very poor — and corre-
spondently honest. We had a youth living with
us by the name of Jim Wolfe. He was an excel-
lent fellow, seventeen years old, and very diffident.
He and I slept together — virtuously; and one
bitter winter's night a cousin Mary — she's mar-
ried now and gone — gave what they call a candy-
pulling in those days in the West, and they took
the saucers of hot candy outside of the house
into the snow, under a sort of old bower that
came from the eaves — it was a sort of an ell then,
all covered with vines — to cool this hot candy
in the snow, and they were all sitting there. In
the mean time we were gone to bed. We were
not invited to attend this party; we were too
young.

The young ladies and gentlemen were assembled
there, and Jim and I were in bed. There was
about four inches of snow on the roof of this ell,

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CATS AND CANDY

and our windows looked out on it, and it was
frozen hard. A couple of tom-cats — it is possible
one might have been of the opposite sex — were
assembled on the chimney' in the middle of this
ell, and they were growling at a fearful rate, and
switching their tails about and going on, and we
couldn't sleep at all.

Finally Jim said, "For two cents I'd go out
and snake them cats off that chimney." So I said,
"Of course you would." He said, "Well, I would;
I have a mighty good notion to do it." Says I,
"Of course you have; certainly you have, you
have a great notion to do it." I hoped he might
try it, but I was afraid he wouldn't.

Finally I did get his ambition up, and he raised
the window and climbed out on the icy roof, with
nothing on but his socks and a very short shirt.
He went climbing along on all fours on the roof
toward the chimney where the cats were. In
the mean time these young ladies and gentlemen
were enjoying themselves down under the eaves,
and when Jim got almost to that chimney he made
a pass at the cats, and his heels flew up and he
shot down and crashed through those vines, and
lit in the midst of the ladies and gentlemen, and
sat down in those hot saucers of candy.

There was a stampede, of course, and he came
up-stairs dropping pieces of chinaware and candy
all the way up, and when he got up there — now
anybody in the world would have gone into pro-

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fanity or something calculated to relieve the
mind, but he didn't ; he scraped the candy off his
legs, nursed his blisters a little, and said, "I could
have ketched them cats if I had had on a good
ready."

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OBITUARY POETRY

Address at the Actors' Fund Fair, Philadel-
phia, in 1895

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, — The — er —
-# this — er — welcome occasion gives me an —
er — opportunity to make an — er — explanation
that I have long desired to deliver myself of. I
rise to the highest honors before a Philadelphia
audience. In the course of my checkered career
I have, on divers occasions, been charged — er —
maliciously with a more or less serious offence.
It is in reply to one of the more — er — important
of these that I wish to speak. More than once
I have been accused of writing obituary poetry
in the Philadelphia Ledger.

I wish right here to deny that dreadful asser-
tion. I will admit that once, when a compositor
in the Ledger establishment, I did set up some of
that poetry, but for a worse offence than that no
indictment can be found against me. I did not
write that poetry — at least, not all of it.

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CIGARS AND TOBACCO

MY friends for some years now have remarked
that I am an inveterate consumer of tobacco.
That is true, but my habits with regard to tobacco
have changed. I have no doubt that you will
say, when I have explained to you what my pres-
ent purpose is, that my taste has deteriorated,
but I do not so regard it.

Whenever I held a smoking-party at my house,
I found that my guests had always just taken the
pledge.

Let me tell you briefly the history of my per-
sonal relation to tobacco. It began, I think,
when I was a lad, and took the form of a quid,
which I became expert in tucking under my
tongue. Afterward I learned the delights of the
pipe, and I suppose there was no other youngster
of my age who could more deftly cut plug to-
bacco so as to make it available for pipe-
smoking.

Well, time ran on, and there came a time when
I was able to gratify one of my youthful ambitions
— I could buy the choicest Havana cigars without
seriously interfering with my income. I smoked

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a good many, changing off from the Havana cigars
to the pipe in the course of a day's smoking.

At last it occurred to me that something was
lacking in the Havana cigar. It did not quite
fulfil my youthful anticipations. I experimented.
I bought what was called a seed-leaf cigar with a
Connecticut wrapper. After a while I became sa-
tiated of these, and I searched for something else.
The Pittsburg stogy was recommended to me. It
certainly had the merit of cheapness, if that be
a merit in tobacco, and I experimented with the
stogy.

Then, once more, I changed off, so that I might
acquire the subtler flavor of the Wheeling toby.
Now that palled, and I looked around New York
in the hope of finding cigars which would seem to
most people vile, but which, I am sure, would be
ambrosial to me. I couldn't find any. They put
into my hands some of those little things that cost
ten cents a box, but they are a delusion.

I said to a friend, "I want to know if you can
direct me to an honest tobacco merchant who will
tell me what is the worst cigar in the New York
market, excepting those made for Chinese con-
sumption — I want real tobacco. If you will do
this and I find the man is as good as his word, I
will guarantee him a regular market for a fair
amount of his cigars."

We found a tobacco dealer who would tell the
truth — who, if a cigar was bad, would boldly say

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so. He produced what he called the very worst
cigars he had ever had in his shop. He let me
experiment with one then and there. The test
was satisfactory.

This was, after all, the real thing. I negotiated
for a box of them and took them away with me,
so that I might be sure of having them handy
when I want them.

I discovered that the " worst cigars," so called,
are the best for me, after all.

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BILLIARDS

Mr. Clemens attended a billiard tourney on the even-
ing of April 24, 1906, and was called onto tell a story.

THE game of billiards has destroyed my
naturally sweet disposition. Once, when I
was an underpaid reporter in Virginia City,
whenever I wished to play billiards I went out
to look for an easy mark. One day a stranger
came to town and opened a billiard parlor. I
looked him over casually. When he proposed a
game, I answered, "All right."

"Just knock the balls around a little so that
I can get your gait," he said; and when I had
done so, he remarked: "I will be perfectly fair
with you. I'll play you left-handed." I felt
hurt, for he was cross-eyed, freckled, and had
red hair, and I determined to teach him a lesson.
He won first shot, ran out, took my half-dollar,
and all I got was the opportunity to chalk my
cue.

"If you can play like that with your left hand,"
I said, "I'd like to see you play with your right."

"I can't," he said. "I'm left-handed."

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THE UNION RIGHT OR WRONG?

Reminiscences of Nevada

I CAN assure you, ladies and gentlemen, that
Nevada had lively newspapers in those days.

My great competitor among the reporters was
Boggs, of the Union, an excellent reporter.

Once in three or four months he would get a
little intoxicated; but, as a general thing, he was
a wary and cautious drinker, although always
ready to damp himself a little with the enemy.

He had the advantage of me in one thing : he
could get the monthly public-school report and
I could not, because the principal hated my sheet
— the Enterprise.

One snowy night, when the report was due, I
started put, sadly wondering how I was to get it.

Presently, a few steps up the almost deserted
street, I stumbled on Boggs, and asked him where
he was going.

* 'After the school report."

'Til go along with you."

"No, sir. I '11 excuse you . ' '

1 ' Have it your own way/ '
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A saloon-keeper's boy passed by with a steam-
ing pitcher of hot punch, and Boggs snuffed the
fragrance gratefully.

He gazed fondly after the boy, and saw him
start up the Enterprise stairs.

I said:

"I wish you could help me get that school busi-
ness, but since you can't, I must run up to the
Union office and see if I can get a proof of it after
it's set up, though I don't begin to suppose I can.
Good night."

"Hold on a minute. I don't mind getting the
report and sitting around with the boys a little
while you copy it, if you're willing to drop down
to the principal's with me."
• "Now you talk like a human being. Come
along."

We ploughed a couple of blocks through the
snow, got the report — a short document — and
soon copied it in our office.

Meantime, Boggs helped himself to the punch.

I gave the manuscript back to him, and we
started back to get an inquest.

At four o'clock in the morning, when we had
gone to press and were having a relaxing concert
as usual (for some of the printers were good sing-
ers and others good performers on the guitar and
on that atrocity the accordion), the proprietor of
the Union strode in and asked if anybody had
heard anything of Boggs or the school report.

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

We stated the case, and all turned out to help
hunt for the delinquent.

We found him standing on a table in a saloon,
with an old tin lantern in one hand and the school
report in the other, haranguing a gang of "corned"
miners on the iniquity of squandering the public
money on education "when hundreds and hun-
dreds of honest, hard-working men were literally
starving for whiskey. ' '

He had been assisting in a regal spree with those
parties for hours.

We dragged him away, and put him into bed.

Of course there was no school report in the
Union, and Boggs held me accountable, though
I was innocent of any intention or desire to com-
pass its absence from that paper, and was as sorry
as any one that the misfortune had occurred. But
we were perfectly friendly.

The day the next school report was due the
proprietor of the Tennessee Mine furnished us a
buggy, and asked us to go down and write some-
thing about the property — a very common re-
quest, and one always gladly acceded to when
people furnished buggies, for we were as fond of
pleasure excursions as other people.

The "mine " was a hole in the ground ninety feet
deep, and no way of getting down into it but by hold-
ing on to a rope and being lowered with a windlass.

The workmen had just gone off somewhere to
dinner.

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I was not strong enough to lower Boggs's bulk,
so I took an unlighted candle in my teeth, made
a loop for my foot in the end of the rope, implored
Boggs not to go to sleep or let the windlass get the
start of him, and then swung out over the shaft.

I reached the bottom muddy and bruised about
the elbows, but safe.

I % lit the candle, made an examination of the
rock, selected some specimens, and shouted to
Boggs to hoist away.

No answer.

Presently a head appeared in the circle of day-
light away aloft, and a voice came down:

"Are you all set ?"

"All set— hoist away!"

"Are you comfortable?"

"Perfectly."

"Could you wait a little?"

"Oh, certainly — no particular hurry."

"Well— good-bye."

"Why, where are you going?"

"After the school report!"

And he did.

I stayed down there an hour, and surprised the
workmen when they hauled up and f ound a man
on the rope instead of a bucket of rock.

I walked home, too — five miles — up-hill.

We had no school report next morning — but
the Union had.

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AN IDEAL FRENCH ADDRESS

Extract from " Paris Notes," in "Tom* Sawyer
Abroad," etc.

I AM told that a French sermon is like a French
speech — it never names an historical event, but
only the date of it ; if you are not up in dates, you
get left. A French speech is something like this :
"Comrades, citizens, brothers, noble parts of
the only sublime and perfect nation, let us not
forget that the 21st January cast off our chains;
that the 10th August relieved us of the shameful
presence of foreign spies ; that the 5th September
was its own justification before Heaven and hu-
manity; that the 18 th Brumaire contained the
seeds of its own punishment; that the 14th July
was the mighty voice of liberty proclaiming the
resurrection, the new day, and inviting the op-
pressed peoples of the earth to look upon the
divine face of France and live; and let us here
record our everlasting curse against the man of
the 2d December, and declare in thunder tones,
the native tones of France, that but for him there
had been no 17th March in history, no 12th Octo-
ber, no 19th January, no 2 2d April, no 16th Novem-
ber, no 30th September, no 2d July, no 14th Feb-

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AN IDEAL FRENCH ADDRESS

ruary, no 29th June, no 1 5th August, no 3 1st May —
thatbut for him, France, the pure, thegrand, thepeer-
less, had had a serene and vacant almanac to-day."

I have heard of one French sermon which closed
in this odd yet eloquent way:

"My hearers, we have sad cause to remember
the man of the 13th January. The results of the
vast crime of the 13th January have been in just
proportion to the magnitude of the act itself.
But for it there had been no 30th November —
sorrowful spectacle! The grisly deed of the 16th
June had not been done but for it, nor had the man
of the 16th June known existence; to it alone the
3d September was due, also the fatal 12th October.
Shall we, then, be grateful for the 13 th January,
with its freight of death for you and me and all
that breathe? Yes, my friends, for it gave us
also that which had never come but for it, and it
alone — the blessed 25th December."

It may be well enough to explain. The man
of the 13th January is Adam; the crime of that
date was the eating of the apple; the sorrowful
spectacle of the 30th November was the expulsion
from Eden; the grisly deed of the 16th June was
the murder of Abel; the act of the 3d September
was the beginning of the journey to the land of
Nod; the 12th day of October, the last mountain-
tops disappeared under the flood. When you go
to church in France, you want to take your
almanac with you — annotated.

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STATISTICS

Extract prom "The History of the Savage
Club "

During that period of gloom when domestic be-
reavement had forced Mr. Clemens and his dear ones
to secure the privacy they craved until their wounds
should heal, his address was known to only a very few
of his closest friends. One old friend in New York,
after vain efforts to get his address, wrote him a let-
ter addressed as follows:

Mark Twain,

God Knows Where,

Try London.

The letter found him, and Mr. Clemens replied to
the letter expressing himself surprised and com-
plimented that the person who was credited with
knowing his whereabouts should take so much in-
terest in him, adding : " Had the letter been addressed
to the care of the 'other party,' I would naturally
have expected to receive it without delay."

His correspondent tried again, and addressed the
second letter:

Mark Twain,

The Devil Knows Where,

Try London.

This found him also no less promptly.
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STATISTICS

On June 9, 1899, he consented to visit the Savage
31ub, London, on condition that there was to be no
publicity and no speech was to be expected from him.
The toastmaster, in proposing the health of their
guest, said that as a Scotchman, and therefore as a
born expert, he thought Mark Twain had little or no
claim to the title of humorist. Mr. Clemens had
tried to be funny but had failed, and his true rdle in
life was statistics; that he was a master of statistics,
and loved them for their own sake, and it would be
the easiest task he ever undertook if he would try
to count all the real jokes he had ever made. While
the toastmaster was speaking, the members saw Mr.
Clemens' s eyes begin to sparkle and his cheeks to flush.
He jumped up, and made a characteristic speech.

PERHAPS I am not a humorist, but I am a
first-class fool — a simpleton; for up to this
moment I have believed Chairman MacAlister to
be a decent person whom I could allow to mix up
with my friends and relatives. The exhibition
he has just made of himself reveals him to be a
scoundrel and a knave of the deepest dye. I have
been cruelly deceived, and it serves me right for
trusting a Scotchman. Yes, I do understand fig-
ures, and I can count. I have counted the words
in MacAlister's drivel (I certainly cannot call it a
speech), and there were exactly three thousand
four hundred and thirty -nine. I also carefully
counted the lies — there were exactly three thou-
sand four hundred and thirty -nine. Therefore,
I leave MacAlister to his fate.
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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one
of the great authors, because they have a sad habit
of dying off. Chaucer is dead, Spencer is dead,
so is Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I am not feel-
ing very well myself.

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GALVESTON ORPHAN BAZAAR

Address at a Fair held at the Waldorf-As-
toria, New York, in October, 1900,
in Aid op the Orphans
at Galveston

T EXPECTED that the Governor of Texas would
1 occupy this place first and would speak to you,
and in the course of his remarks would drop a
text for me to talk from; but with the proverbial
obstinacy that is proverbial with governors, they
go back on their duties, and he has not come here,
and has not furnished me with a text, and I am
here without a text. I have no text except what
you furnish me with your handsome faces, and —
but I won't continue that, for I could go on for-
ever about attractive faces, beautiful dresses, and
other things. But, after all, compliments should
be in order in a place like this,

I have been in New York two or three days,
and have been in a condition of strict diligence
night and day, the object of this diligence being
to regulate the moral and political situation on
this planet — put it on a sound basis — and when
you are regulating the conditions of a planet it

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

requires a great deal of talk in a great many
kinds of ways, and when you have talked a lot
the emptier you get, and get also in a position of
corking. When I am situated like that, with
nothing to say, I feel as though I were a sort of
fraud; I seem to be playing a part, and please
consider I am playing a part for want of some-
thing better, and this is not unfamiliar to me;
I have often done this before.

When I was here about eight years ago I was
coming up in a car of the elevated road. Very few
people were in that car, and on one end of it there
was no one, except on the opposite seat, where sat
a man about fifty years old, with a most winning
face and an elegant eye — a beautiful eye; and I
took him from his dress to be a master mechanic,
a man who had a vocation. He had with him
a very fine little child of about four or five years.
I was watching the affection which existed be-
tween those two. I judged he was the grand-
father, perhaps. It was really a pretty child,
and I was admiring her, and as soon as he saw I
was admiring her he began to notice me.

I could see his admiration of me in his eye, and
I did what everybody else would do — admired
the child four times as much, knowing I would
get four times as much of his admiration. Things
went on very pleasantly. I was making my way
into his heart.

By-and-by, when he almost reached the station
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GALVESTON ORPHAN BAZAAR

where he was to get off, he got up, crossed over,
and he said: "Now I am going to say something
to you which I hope you will regard as a com-
pliment." And then he went on to say: "I have
never seen Mark Twain, but I have seen a por-
trait of him, and any friend of mine will tell you
that when I have once seen a portrait of a man I
place it in my eye and store it away in my memory,
and I can tell you now that you look enough like
Mark Twain to be his brother. Now," he said,
"I hope you take this as a compliment. Yes,
you are a very good imitation; but when I come
to look closer, you are probably not that man."

I said: "I will be frank with you. In my desire j /
to look like that excellent character I have dressed
for the character; I have been playing a part."

He said: "That is all right, that is all right;
you look very well on the outside, but when it
comes to the inside you are not in it with the
original."

So when I come to a place like this with nothing
valuable to say I always play a part. But I will
say before I sit down that when it comes to saying
anything here I will express myself in this way: I
am heartily in sympathy with you in your efforts
to help those who were sufferers in this calamity,
and in your desire to help those who were render-
ed homeless, and in saying this I wish to impress
on you the fact that I am not playing a part.

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SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE

After the address at the Robert Fulton Fund meeting,
June 19, 1906, Mr. Clemens talked to the assembled
reporters about the San Francisco earthquake.

I HAVEN'T been there since 1868, and that
great city of San Francisco has grown up since
my day. When I was there she had one hundred
and eighteen thousand people, and of this number
eighteen thousand were Chinese. I was a reporter
on the Virginia City Enterprise in Nevada in
1862, and stayed there, I think, about two years,
when I went to San Francisco and got a job as a
reporter on The Call. I was there three or four
years.

I remember one day I was walking down Third
Street in San Francisco. It was a sleepy, dull
Sunday afternoon, and no one was stirring. Sud-
denly as I looked up the street about three hun-
dred yards the whole side of a house fell out.
The street was full of bricks and mortar. At the
same time I was knocked against the side of a
house, and stood there stunned for a moment.

I thought it was an earthquake. Nobody else
had heard anything about it and no one said

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SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE

earthquake to me afterward, but I saw it and I
wrote it. Nobody else wrote it, and the house I
saw go into the street was the only house in the
city that felt it. I've always wondered if it
wasn't a little performance gotten up for my
especial entertainment by the nether regions.

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CHARITY AND ACTORS

Address at the Actors' Fund Fair in the Metro-
politan Opera House, New York, May 6, 1907

Mr. Clemens, in his white suit, formally declared the
fair open. Mr. Daniel Frohman, in introducing Mr.
Clemens, said:

"We intend to make this a banner week in the
history of the Fund, which takes an interest in every
one on the stage, be he actor, singer, dancer, or work-
man. We have spent more than $40,000 during the
past year. Charity covers a multitude of sins, but
it also reveals a multitude of virtues. At the open-
ing of the former fair we had the assistance of Edwin
Booth and Joseph Jefferson. In their place we have
to-day that American institution and apostle of wide
humanity — Mark Twain."

AS Mr. Frohman has said, charity reveals a
l multitude of virtues. This is true, and it is
to be proved here before the week is over. Mr.
Frohman has told you something of the object
and something of the character of the work. He
told me he would do this — and he has kept his
word! I had expected to hear of it through the
newspapers. I wouldn't trust anything between
Frohman and the newspapers — except when it's
a case of charity!

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CHARITY AND ACTORS

You should all remember that the actor has
been your benefactor many and many a year.
When you have been weary and downcast he has
lifted your heart out of gloom and given you a
fresh impulse. You are all under obligation to
him. This is your opportunity to be his bene-
factor — to help provide for him in his old age and
when he suffers from infirmities.

At this fair no one is to be persecuted to buy.
If you offer a twenty-dollar bill in payment for
a purchase of $i you will receive $19 in change.
There is to be no robbery here. There is to be no
creed here — no religion except charity. We want
to raise $250,000 — and that is a great task to
attempt.

The President has set the fair in motion by
pressing the button in Washington. Now your
good wishes are to be transmuted into cash.

By virtue of the authority in me vested I de-
clare the fair open. I call the ball game. Let
the transmuting begin!

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RUSSIAN REPUBLIC

The American auxiliary movement to aid the cause
of freedom in Russia was launched on the evening of
April ii, 1906, at the Club A house, 3 Fifth Avenue,
with Mr. Clemens and Maxim Gorky as the principal
spokesmen. Mr. Clemens made an introductory ad-
dress, presenting Mr. Gorky.

IF we can build a Russian republic to give to
the persecuted people of the Tsar's domain
the same measure of freedom that we enjoy, let
us go ahead and do it. We need not discuss the
methods by which that purpose is to be attained.
Let us hope that fighting will be postponed or
averted for a while, but if it must come —

I am most emphatically in sympathy with the
movement, now on foot in Russia, to make that
country free. I am certain that it will be suc-
cessful, as it deserves to be. Any such movement
should have and deserves our earnest and unani-
mous co-operation, and such a petition for funds
as has been explained by Mr. Hunter, with its just
and powerful meaning, should have the utmost
support of each and every one of us. Anybody
whose ancestors were in this country when we

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RUSSIAN REPUBLIC

were trying to free ourselves from oppression,
must sympathize with those who now are trying
to do the same thing in Russia.

The parallel I have just drawn only goes to show
that it makes no difference whether the oppression
is bitter or not; men with red, warm blood in
their veins will not endure it, but will seek to
cast it off.. If we keep our hearts in this matter
Russia will be free.

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RUSSIAN SUFFERERS

On December 18, 1905, an entertainment was given
at the Casino for the benefit of the Russian sufferers.
After the performance Mr. Clemens spoke.

1ADIES AND GENTLEMEN, — It seems a
L* sort of cruelty to inflict upon an audience
like this our rude English tongue, after we have
heard that divine speech flowing in that lucid
Gallic tongue.

It has always been a marvel to me — that
French language; it has always been a puzzle
to me. How beautiful that language is. How
expressive it seems to be. How full of grace
it is.

And when it comes from lips like those, how
eloquent and how liquid it is. And, oh, I am
always deceived — I always think I am going to
understand it.

Oh, it is such a delight to me, such a de-
light to me, to meet Madame Bernhardt, and
laugh hand to hand and heart to heart with
her.

I have seen her play, as we all have, and oh, that
is divine; but I have always wanted to know

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RUSSIAN SUFFERERS

Madame Bernhardt herself — her fiery self. I
have wanted to know that beautiful character.

Why, she is the youngest person I ever saw,
except myself — for I always feel young when I
come in the presence of young people.

I have a pleasant recollection of an incident
so many years ago — when Madame Bernhardt
came to Hartford, where I lived, and she was
going to play and the tickets were three dollars,
and there were two lovely women — a widow and
her daughter — neighbors of ours, highly culti-
vated ladies they were; their tastes were fine and
elevated, but they were very poor, and they said:
"Well, we must not spend six dollars on a pleasure
of the mind, a pleasure of the intellect; we must
spend it, if it must go at all, to furnish to some-
body bread to eat."

And so they sorrowed over the fact that they
had to give up that great pleasure of seeing
Madame Bernhardt, but there were two neighbors
equally highly cultivated and who could not afford
bread, and those good-hearted Joneses sent that
six dollars — deprived themselves of it — and
sent it to those poor Smiths to buy bread with.
And those Smiths took it and bought tickets with
it to see Madame Bernhardt.

Oh yes, some people have tastes and intelligence
also.

Now, I was going to make a speech — I sup-
posed I was, but I am not. It is late, late ; and so

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

I am going to tell a story; and there is this advan-
tage about a story, anyway, that whatever moral
or valuable thing you put into a speech, why,
it gets diffused among those involuted sentences
and possibly your audience goes away without find-
ing out what that valuable thing was that you
were trying to confer upon it; but, dear me, you
put the same jewel into a story and it becomes the
keystone of that story, and you are bound to get
it — it flashes, it flames, it is the jewel in the toad's
head — you don't overlook that.

Now, if I am going to talk on such a subject as,
for instance, the lost opportunity-— oh, the lost
opportunity. Anybody in this house who has
reached the turn of life — sixty, or seventy, or even
fifty, or along there — when he goes back along his
history, there he finds it mile-stoned all the way
with the lost opportunity, and you know how
pathetic that is.

You younger ones cannot know the full pathos
that lies in those words — the lost opportunity;
but anybody who is old, who has really lived and
felt this life, he knows the pathos of the lost
opportunity.

Now, I will tell you a story whose moral is that,
whose lesson is that, whose lament is that.

I was in a village which is a suburb of New
Bedford several years ago — well, New Bedford is
a suburb of Fair Haven, or perhaps it is the other
way; in any case, it took both of those towns tQ

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RUSSIAN SUFFERERS

make a great centre of the great whaling industry
of the first half of the nineteenth century, and I
was up there at Fair Haven some years ago with
a friend of mine.

There was a dedication of a great town-hall, a
public building, and we were there in the after-
noon. This great building was filled, like this
great theatre, with rejoicing villagers, and my
friend and I started down the centre aisle. He
saw a man standing in that aisle, and he said:
"Now, look at that bronzed veteran — at that
mahogany-faced man. Now, tell me, do you see
anything about that man's face that is emotional P
Do you see anything about it that suggests that
inside that man anywhere there are fires that can
be started? Would you ever imagine that that
is a human volcano?"

"Why, no," I said, "I would not. He looks
like a Wooden Indian in front of a cigar store."

"Very well," said my friend, "I will show you
that there is emotion even in that unpromising
place. I will just go to that man and I will just
mention in the most casual way an incident in
his life. That man id getting along toward ninety
years old* He is past eighty. I will mention
an incident of fifty or sixty years ago. Now, just
watch the effect, and it will be so casual that if
you don't watch you won't know when I do say
that thing — but you just watch the effect."

He went on down there and accosted this anti-
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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

quity, and made a remark or two. I could not
catch up. They were so casual I could not recog-
nize which one it was that touched that bottom,
for in an instant that old man was literally in
eruption and was filling the whole place with pro-
fanity of the most exquisite kind. You never
heard such accomplished profanity. I never
heard it also delivered with such eloquence.

I never enjoyed profanity as I enjoyed it then
— more than if I had been uttering it myself.
There is nothing like listening to an artist — all
his passions passing away in lava, smoke, thunder,
lightning, and earthquake.

Then this friend said to me: "Now, I will tell
you about that. About sixty years ago that man
was a young fellow of twenty-three, and had just
come home from a three years' whaling voyage.
He came into that village of his, happy and proud
because now, instead of being chief mate, he was
going to be master of a whaleship, and he was
proud and happy about it.

"Then he found that there had been a kind of a
cold frost come upon that town and the whole
region roundabout; for while he had been away
the Father Mathew temperance excitement had
come upon the whole region. Therefore, every-
body had taken the pledge; there wasn't any-
body for miles and miles around that had not
taken the pledge.

"So you can see what a solitude it was to this
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RUSSIAN SUFFERERS

young man, who was fond of his grog. And he
was just an outcast, because when they found he
would not join Father Mathew's Society they
ostracized him, and he went about that town three
weeks, day and night, in utter loneliness — the only
human being in the whole place who ever took
grog, and he had to take it privately.

"If you don't know what it is to be ostracized,
to be shunned by your fellow-man, may you never
know it. Then he recognized that there was
something more valuable in this life than grog,
and that is the fellowship of your fellow-man.
And at last he gave it up, and at nine o'clock one
night he went down to the Father Mathew
Temperance Society, and with a broken heart he
said: 'Put my name down for membership in this
society.'

"And then he went away crying, and at earliest
dawn the next morning they came for him and
routed him out, and they said that new ship of his
was ready to sail on a three years' voyage. In a
minute he was on board that ship and gone.

"And he said — well, he was not out of sight of
that town till he began to repent, but he had
made up his mind that he would not take a drink,
and so that whole voyage of three years was a
three years' agony to that man because he saw all
the time the mistake he had made.

€ ' He felt it all through ; he had constant remind-
ers of it, because the crew would pass him with
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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

their grog, come out on the deck and take it, and
there was the torturous smell of it.

" He went through the whole three years of suf-
fering, and at last coming into port it was snowy,
it was cold, he was stamping through the snow
two feet deep on the deck and 1 nging to get home,
and there was his crew torturing him to the last
minute with hot grog, but at last he had his re-
ward. He really did get to shore at last, and
jumped and ran and bought a jug and rushed to
the society's office, and said to the secretary:

" 'Take my name off your membership books,
and do it right away! I have got a three yeais'
thirst on.'

"And the secretary said: 'It is not necessary.
You were blackballed!' "

W4TT£R|5QN ANP TWAIN AS REBELS

Address at the Celebration op Abraham Lin-
coln's 92D Birthday Anniversary, Carnegie
Hall, February ii, 1901, to Raise Funds
bor the Lincoln Memorial Univer-
sity at Gumbp^awp Gap, Tenn.

LApi£$ A^R GPNTI<PMEN — The remainder
-* of x#y duties, $s presiding qhajnqan here this
ey^njng are but two^-Q^iy t^p. Qflp of them
i§ £a§y, an4 the other difficult- Th^t *§ tQ say, I
i^ust Pt^HP 6 th^ §rat% ^pd then keep stttl and
give him 3 ehftnpe. The Ramp ctf Henry W^ttersofl
carfies ^ith it #s owfl expl^ji^tiorv It is like ^n
ejeptjic l\$1f\t qn top qf J^dison Square Garden;
yptj tptiph th e button ^nd the light flashes up
out p^ the d^kJ 1 ?^- Yqu q\entiop th? n§pie of
R$pry ^tterso^, and YQur mwfa 3TC 3t PW>e
^min^ted Wth the sgplp^did T^di^pe pf his fame
%r$ ^chieye^^ftts. A journalist, a soldier, an
orator, % ^tatesn^, a rebel. Yes, he was a rebel ;
an4> h^er s^i^, now h$ is a reponstrupted rebel.

Jt is r a ^vtr^s drcqmstwce, a pircumst&i\ce
brought about with^t ^y pQjlv^ap Qr pre-.
a^r%n^ejjnei?jt, th^jfe h§. anc^ I, * both of whPfl* were

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

rebels related by blood to each other* should be
brought here together this evening bearing a
tribute in our hands and bowing our heads in
reverence to that noble soul who for three years
we tried to destroy. I don't know as the fact
has ever been mentioned before, but it is a fact,
nevertheless. Colonel Watterson and I were both
rebels, and we are blood relations. I was a
second lieutenant in a Confederate company —
for a while — oh, I could have stayed on if I had
wanted to. I made myself felt, I left tracks all
around the country. I could have stayed on,
but it was such weather. I never saw such
weather to be out-of-doors in, in all my life.

The Colonel commanded a regiment, and did his
part, I suppose, to destroy the Union. He did
not succeed, yet if he had obeyed me he would
have done so. I had a plan, and I fully intended
to drive General Grant into the Pacific Ocean —
if I could get transportation. I told Colonel
Watterson about it. I told him what he had to
do. What I wanted him to do was to surround
the Eastern army and wait until I came up. But
he was insubordinate ; he stuck on some quibble of
military etiquette about a second lieutenant giving
orders to a colonel or something like that. And
what was the consequence ? The Union was pre-
served. This is the first time I believe that that
secret has ever been revealed.

No one outside of the family circle, I think t
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WATTERSON AND TWAIN .

knew it before; but there the facts are. Watter-
son saved the Union; yes, he saved the Union.
And yet there he sits, and not a step has been
taken or a movement made toward granting him
a pension. That is the way things are done. It
is a case where some blushing ought to be done.
You ought to blush, and I ought to blush, and he
— well, he's a little out of practice now.

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ROBERT FULTON FUND

Address Made on the Evening qt April 19, 1906

Mr. Clemens had been asked to address the associa-
tion by Gen. Frederick D. Grant, president. He was
offered a fee of $1000, but refused it, saying:

" I shall be glad to do it, but I must stipulate that
you keep the $1000, and add it to the Memorial Fund
as my contribution to erect a monument in New
York to the memory of the man who applied steam
to navigation.' '

At this meeting Mr. Clemens made this formal
announcement jrom the platform:

" This is my last appearance on the paid platform.
I shall not retire from the gratis platform until I am
buried, and courtesy will compel me to keep still
and not disturb the others. Now, since I must, I
shall say good-bye. I see many faces in this audi-
ence well known to me. They are all my friends, and
I feel that those I don't know are my friends, too. I
wish to consider that you represent the nation, and
that in saying good-bye to you I am saying good-bye
to the nation. In the great name of humanity, let
me say this final word : I offer an appeal in behalf of
that vast, pathetic multitude of fathers, mothers,
and helpless little children. They were sheltered and
happy two days ago. Now they are wandering, for-

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lorn, hopeless, and homeless, the victims of a great
disaster. So I beg of you, I beg of you, to open your
hearts and open your purses and remember San
Francisco, the smitten city."

I WISH to deliver a historical address. I've been
studying the history of — er — a — let me see — a
[then he stopped in confusion, and walked over
to Gen. Fred D. Grant, who sat at the head of the
platform. He leaned over in a whisper, and then
returned to the front of the stage and continued].
Oh yes! I've been studying Robert Fulton. I've
been studying a biographical sketch of Robert
Fulton, the inventor of — er — a — let's see — oh
yes, the inventor of the electric telegraph and the
Morse sewing-machine. Also, I understand he
invented the air — diria — pshaw! I have it at
last — the dirigible balloon. Yes, the dirigible —
but it is a difficult word, and I don't see why any-
body should marry a couple of words like that
when they don't want to be married at all and
are likely to quarrel with each other all the time.
I should put that couple of words under the ban
of the United States Supreme Court, under its
decision of a few days ago, and take 'em out and
drown 'em.

I used to know Fulton. It used to do me good
to see him dashing through the town on a wild
broncho.

And Fulton was bom in — er — a— well, it doesn't
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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

make much difference where he was born, does it ?
I remember a man who came to interview me once,
to get a sketch of my life. I consulted with a
friend — a practical man — before he came, to
know how I should treat him.

"Whenever you give the interviewer a fact,"
he said, "give him another fact that will con-
tradict it. Then he'll go away with a jum-
ble that he can't use at all. Be gentle, be
sweet, smile like an idiot — just be natural/'
That's what my friend told me to do, and I
did it.

"Where were you born?" asked the inter-
viewer.

"Well — er — a," I began, "I was born in Ala-
bama, or Alaska, or the Sandwich Islands; I
don't know where, but right around there some-
where. And you had better put it down before
you forget it."

"But you weren't born in all those places," he
said.

' ' Well, I've offered you three places. Take your
choice. They're all at the same price."

"How old are you?" he asked.

"I shall be nineteen in June," I said.

"Why, there's such a discrepancy between your
age and your looks," he said.

"Oh, that's nothing," I said, "I was born dis-
crepantly."

Then we got to talking about my brother Sam-
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uel, and he told me my explanations were confus-
ing.

"I suppose he is dead," I said. "Some said
that he was dead and some said that he wasn't."

"Did you bury him without knowing whether
he was dead or not ? " asked the reporter^.

"There was a mystery," said I. (^'We were /
twinsyand one day when we were two weeks old — ]f
that is, he was one week old, and I was one week
old — we got mixed up in the bath-tub, and one of
us drowned. We never could tell which. One
of us had a strawberry birthmark on the back of
his hand. There it is on my hand. This is the
one that was drowned. There's no doubt about
it."

"Where's the mystery?" he said.

"Why, don't you see how stupid it was to
bury the wrong twin?" I answered. I didn't
explain it any more because he said the expla-
nation confused him. To me it is perfectly
plain.

But, to get back to Fulton. I'm going along
like an old man I used to know who used to start
to tell a story about his grandfather. He had an
awfully retentive memory, and he never finished
the story, because he switched off into some-
thing else. He used to tell about how his grand-
father one day went into a pasture, where there
was a ram. The old man dropped a silver dime
in the grass, and stooped over to pick it up. The

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ram was observing him, and took the old man's
action as an invitation.

Just as he was going to finish about the ram
this friend of mine would recall that his grand-
father had a niece who had a glass eye. She used
to loan that glass eye to another lady friend, who
used it when she received company. The eye
didn't fit the friend's face, and it was loose. And
whenever she winked it would turn over.

Then he got on the subject of accidents, and he
would tell a story about how he believed accidents
never happened.

"There was an Irishman coming down a ladder
with a hod of bricks," he said, "and a Dutchman
was standing on the ground below. The Irish-
man fell on the Dutchman and killed him. Ac-
cident? Never! If the Dutchman hadn't been
there the Irishman would have been killed. Why
didn't the Irishman fall on a dog which was next
to the Dutchman? Because the dog would have
seen him coming."

Then he'd get off from the Dutchman to an
uncle named Reginald Wilson. Reginald went
into a carpet factory one day, and got twisted
into the machinery's belt. He went excursion-
ing around the factory until he was properly dis-
tributed and was woven into sixty-nine yards
of the best three-ply carpet. His wife bought the
carpet, and then she erected a monument to his
memory. It read:

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ROBERT FULTON FUND

Sacred to the memory

sixty-nine yards of the best three-ply carpet

containing the mortal remainders of

REGINALD WILSON

Go thou and do likewise

And so on he would ramble about telling the
story of his grandfather until we never were told
whether he found the ten-cent piece or whether
something else happened.

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FULTON DAY, JAMESTOWN

Address Delivered September 23, 1907

Lieutenant-Governor Ellyson, of Virginia, in intro-
ducing Mr. Clemens, said:

"The people have come here to bring a tribute of
affectionate recollection for the man who has con-
tributed so much to the progress of the world and
the happiness of mankind." As Mr. Clemens came
down to the platform the applause became louder
and louder, until Mr. Clemens held out his hand for
silence. It was a great triumph, and it was almost
a minute after the applause ceased before Mr. Clemens
could speak. He attempted it once, and when the
audience noticed his emotion, it cheered again loudly.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN —I am but hu-
-/ man, and when you give me a reception like
that I am obliged to wait a little while I get my
voice. When you appeal to my head, I don't feel
it ; but when you appeal to my heart, I do feel it.
We are here to celebrate one of the greatest
events of American history, and not only in
American history, but in the world's history.

Indeed it was — the application of steam by
Robert Fulton. ¥

It was a world event — there are not many of
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FULTON DAY, JAMESTOWN

them. It is peculiarly an American event, that
is true, but the influence was very broad in effect.
We should regard this day as a very great Ameri-
can holiday. We have not many that are ex-
clusively American holidays. We have the Fourth
of July, which we regard as an American holiday,
but it is nothing of the kind. I am waiting for a
dissenting voice. All great efforts that led up
to the Fourth of July were made, not by Ameri-
cans, but by English residents of America, sub-
jects of the King of England.

They fought all the fighting that was done,
they shed and spilt all the blood that was spilt,
in securing to us the invaluable liberties which
are incorporated in the Declaration of Indepen-
dence; but they were not Americans. They
signed the Declaration of Independence; no
American's name is signed to that document at
all. There never was an American such as you
and I are until after the Revolution, when it had
all been fought out and liberty secured, after
the adoption of the Constitution, and the recogni-
tion of the Independence of America by all powers.

While we revere the Fourth of July — and let
us always revere it, and the liberties it conferred
upon us — yet it was not an American event, a
great American day.

It was an American who applied that steam
successfully. There are not a great many world
events, and we have our full share. The tele-

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

gi&gh, telephone,, 3A4 the ajppl^atipp pf steajg^ to
navigatipu-^theise qxe gxe^t JJ^rifxn eyeijits,.

To-day I haye bpen requested, or I ^ye re-
quested tnysplf, npjt tp, pojj^oe ipyself ^o, ^vtmi^lp,-
ws you with, infojatnatipi?,, ^^ tp, i^npi^d. ypv. qf
things,, awi to, iatrocfcics pne pi; the lion's, cel$-
lprwjts,.

AdjniraJ Ha^riij^tori, here i$ gpjpg tq tfft XPM
ajl that J tav« left untold,. I W g°*Pg tq tejJL yqq
aJi that l toow,, a^4 tb^n h# yriU follow, yjp wjftl^
such rags and remnants as he can fin^, ap^ t$|
you wbafe h& l^npwsv

No doubt yo^ Ip&ve Ipeard a £re^ deal aty#tf
Rob^t Fulton aud the iftftuwjces tlutf bay? g^w^
from l^s ijuveutiqu,, but tk? J^ttl^ s^t^abpat i&
suffering wgkctf.

You prpkabjy do npt k&QW a §r^it <$#$l Qfopiffi
that boat.. It was the mo^ itnpp;rta#t s.teauv-
b&at iu %h§ wp$4 X was t^iere %nd s^ it. # Ad-
swal Harrington was tbe^e at t^e tira£. ^t ne$4
not surprise you, for he & pot as old a* he : \pp^s t .
That little boat was interesting ^n ey^ way..
The si?e of it. The bpat. was one [consults
Admiral}, he said tea feet long. T^e kre^tfe of
that boat [cousujts Admiral twq bw4re4 ft*?t.
You see, the? first and most important 4$tail i^
the length, then the breadth, afl^ ifapti #\p depth;
the depth of that hoat was [counts ag§SlH r^he
Admiral says it was a flat fr}at: Th e$ &?!" tqn r

nage— you kiiQW nothing a^put a bp^t £intij y$}

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FULTON DAY, JAMESTOWN

know two more things: her speed and her ton-
nage. We know the speed she made. She made
four miles — and sometimes five miles. It was
on her initial trip, on August n, 1807, that she
made her initial trip, when she went from [con-
suits Admiral] Jersey City — to Chicago. That's
right. She went by way of Albany. Now comes
the tonnage of that boat. Tonnage of a boat
means the amount of displacement ; displacement
means the amount of water a vessel can shove
in a day. The tonnage of man is estimated by the
amount of whiskey he can displace in a day.

Robert Fulton named the Clermont in honor of
his bride, that is, Clermont was the name of the
county-seat.

I feel that it surprises you that I know so much.
In my remarks of welcome of Admiral Harrington
I am not going to give him compliments. Com-
pliments always embarrass a man. You do not
know anything to say. It does not inspire you
with words. There is nothing you can say in
answer to a compliment. I have been compli-
mented myself a great many times, and they
always embarrass me — I always feel that they
have not said enough.

The Admiral and myself have held public office,
and were associated together a great deal in a
friendly way in the time of Pocahontas. That
incident where Pocahontas saves the life of Smith
from her father, Powhatan's club, was gotten up

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

by the Admiral and myself to advertise James-
town.

At that time the Admiral and myself did not
have the facilities of advertising that you have.

I have known Admiral Harrington in all kinds
of situations — in public service, on the platform,
and in the chain-gang now and then — but it was
a mistake. A case of mistaken identity. I do
not think it is at all a necessity to tell you Ad-
miral Harrington's public history. You know
that it is in the histories. I am not here to tell
you anything about his public life, but to expose
his private life.

I am something of a poet. When the great
poet laureate, Tennyson, died, and I found that
the place was open, I tried to get it — but I did not
get it. Anybody can write the first line of a
poem, but it is a very difficult task to make the
second line rhyme with the first. When I was
down in Australia there were two towns named
Johnswood and Par-am. I made this rhyme :

"The people of Johnswood are pious and good;
The people of Par-am they don't care a ."

I do not want to compliment Admiral Harring-
ton, but as long as such men as he devote their
lives to the public service the credit of the
country will never cease. I will say that the
same high qualities, the same moral and in-

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FULTON DAY, JAMESTOWN

tellectual attainments, the same graciousness of
manner, of conduct, of observation, and expres-
sion have caused Admiral Harrington to be mis-
taken for me — and I have been mistaken for him.
A mutual compliment can go no further, and I
now have the honor and privilege of introducing
to you Admiral Harrington.
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LOTOS CLUB DINNER IN HONOR
OF MARK TWAIN

Address at the First Formal Dinner in the New
Club-House, November ii, 1893

In introducing the guest of the evening, Mr. Law-
rence said:

"To-night the old faces appear once more amid
new surroundings. The place where last we met
about the table has vanished, and to-night we have
our first Lotos dinner in a home that is all our own.
It is peculiarly fitting that the board should now be
spread in honor of one who has been a member of
the club for full a score of years, and it is a happy
augury for the future that our fellow-member whom
we assemble to greet should be the bearer of a most
distinguished name in the world of letters; for the
Lotos Club is ever at its best when paying homage
to genius in literature or in art. Is there a civilized
being who has not heard the name of Mark Twain?
We knew him long years ago, before he came out of
the boundless West, brimful of wit and eloquence,
with no reverence for anything, and went abroad to
educate the untutored European in the subtleties of
the American joke. The world has looked on and
applauded while he has broken many images. He
has led us in imagination all over the globe. With
him as our guide we have traversed alike the Mis-

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LOTOS CLUB DINNER

sissippi and the Sea of Galilee. At his bidding we
have laughed at a thousand absurdities. By a labori-
ous process of reasoning he has convinced us that the
Egyptian mummies are actually dead. He has held
us spellbound upon the plain at the foot of the great
Sphinx, and we have joined him in weeping bitter
tears at the tomb of Adam. To-night we greet him
in the flesh. What name is there in literature that
can be likened to his? Perhaps some of the dis-
tinguished gentlemen about this table can tell us,
but I know of none. Himself his only parallel!"

h/[R. PRESIDENT, GENTLEMEN, AND
iVl FELLOW-MEMBERS OF THE LOTOS
CLUB, — I have seldom in my lifetime listened
to compliments so felicitously phrased or so well
deserved. I return thanks for them from a full
heart and an appreciative spirit, and I will say
this in self-defence: While I am charged with
having no reverence for anything, I wish to say
that I have reverence for the man who can utter
such truths, and I also have a deep reverence
and a sincere one for a club that can do such
justice to me. To be the chief guest of such a
club is something to be envied, and if I read your
countenances rightly I am envied. I am glad
to see this club in such palatial quarters. I re-
member it twenty years ago when it was housed
in a stable.

Now when I was studying for the ministry
there were two or three things tfcst Struck my

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MARK TWAINS SPEECHES

attention particularly. At the first banquet
mentioned in history that other prodigal son
who came back from his travels was invited to
stand up and have his say. They were all there,
his brethren, David and Goliath, and — er, and
if he had had such experience as I have had he
would have waited until those other people got
through talking. He got up and testified to all
is failings. Now if he had waited before telling
all about his riotous living until the others had
spoken he might not have given himself away as
he did, and I think that I would give myself away
if I should go on. I think I'd better wait until
the others hand in their testimony; then if it is
necessary for me to make an explanation, I will
get up and explain, and if I cannot do that, I'll
deny it happened.

Later in the evening Mr. Clemens made another
speech, replying to a fire of short speeches by Charles
Dudley Warner, Charles A. Dana, Seth Low, General
Porter, and many others, each welcoming the guest
of honor.

I don't see that I have a great deal to explain.
I got off very well, considering the oppor-
tunities that these other fellows had. I don't
see that Mr. Low said anything against me, and
neither did Mr. Dana. However, I will say that
I never heard so many lies told in one evening as
were told by Mr. McKelway — and I consider my-

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LOTOS CLUB DINNER

self very capable; but even in his case, when he
got through, I was gratified by finding how much
he hadn't found out. By accident he missed the
very things that I didn't want to have said, and
now, gentlemen, about Americanism.

I have been on the continent of Europe for two
and a half years. I have met many Americans
there, some sojourning for a short time only, others
making protracted stays, and it has been very
gratifying to me to find that nearly all preserved
their Americanism. I have found they all like
to see the Flag fly, and that their hearts rise when
they see the Stars and Stripes. I met only one
lady who had forgotten the land of her birth and
glorified monarchical institutions.

I think it is a great thing to say that in two and
a half years I met only one person who had fallen
a victim to the shams — I think we may call them
shams — of nobilities and of heredities. She was
entirely lost in them. After I had listened to her
for a long time, I said to her: "At least you must
admit that we have one merit. We are not like
the Chinese, who refuse to allow their citizens
who are tired of the country to leave it. Thank
God, we don't!"

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With Mr. Howells, Edward Everett Hale, Thomas
Nelson Page, and a number of other authors, Mr.
Clemens appeared before the committee December 6,
1906. The new Copyright Bill contemplated an
author's copyright for the term of his life and for fifty
years thereafter, applying also for the benefit of artists,
musicians, and others, but the authors did most of the
talking. F. D. Millet made a speech for the artists f
and John Philip Sousa for the musicians.

Mr. Clemens was the last speaker of the day, and
its chief feature. He made a speech, the serious parts
of which created a strong impression, and the humor-
ous parts set the Senators and Representatives in roars
of laughter.

I HAVE read this bill. At least I have read
such portions as I could understand. Nobody
but a practised legislator can read the bill and
thoroughly understand it, and I am not a practised
legislator.

I am interested particularly and especially
in the part of the bill which concerns my trade.
I like that extension of copyright life to the au-
thor's life and fifty years afterward. I think
that would satisfy any reasonable author, be-

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cause it would take care of his children. Let the
grandchildren take care of themselves. That
would take care of my daughters, and after that
I am not particular. I shall then have long been
out of this struggle, independent of it, indifferent
to it.

It isn't objectionable to me that all the trades
and professions in the United States are protected
by the bill. I like that. They are all important
and worthy, and if we can take care of them under
the Copyright law I should like to see it done. I
should like to see oyster culture added, and any-
thing else.

I am aware that copyright must have a limit,
because that is required by the Constitution of the
United States, which sets aside the earlier Con-
stitution, which we call the decalogue. The dec-
alogue says you shall not take away from any
man his profit. I don't like to be obliged to use
the harsh term. What the decalogue really says
is, "Thou shalt not steal," but I am trying to use
more polite language.

The laws of England and America do take it
away, do select but one class, the people who
create the literature of the land. They always
talk handsomely about the literature of the land,
always what a fine, great, monumental thing a
great literature is, and in the midst of their en-
thusiasm they turn around and do what they can
to discourage it.

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

I know we must have a limit, but forty-two
years is too much of a limit. I am quite unable
to guess why there should be a limit at all to the
possession of the product of a man's labor. There
is no limit to real estate.

Doctor Hale has suggested that a man might
just as well, after discovering a coal-mine and
working it forty-two years, have the Government
step in and take it away.

What is the excuse ? It is that the author who
produced that book has had the profit of it long
enough, and therefore the Government takes a
profit which does not belong to it and generously
gives it to the 88,000,000 of people. But it
doesn't do anything of the kind. It merely takes
the author's property, takes his children's bread,
and gives the publisher double profit. He goes
on publishing the book and as many of his con-
federates as choose to go into the conspiracy do so,
and they rear families in affluence.

And they continue the enjoyment of those ill-
gotten gains generation after generation forever,
for they never die. In a few weeks or months or
years I shall be out of it, I hope under a monu-
ment. I hope I shall not be entirely forgotten,
and I shall subscribe to the monument myself.
But I shall not be caring what happens if there
are fifty years left of my copyright. My copyright
produces annually a good deal more than I can
use, but my children can use it. I can get along;

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I know a lot of trades. But that goes to my
daughters, who can't get along as well as I can
because I have carefully raised them as young
ladies, who don't know anything and can't do
anything. I hope Congress will extend to them
the charity which they have failed to get from me.

Why, if 3. man who is not even mad, but only
strenuous — strenuous about race-suicide — should
come to me and try to get me to use my large
political and ecclesiastical influence to get a bill
passed by this Congress limiting families to
twenty-two children by one mother, I should try
to calm him down. I should reason with him.
I should say to him, "Leave it alone. Leave it
alone and it will take care of itself. Only one
couple a year in the United States can reach that
limit. If they have reached that limit let them
go right on. Let them have all the liberty they
want. In restricting that family to twenty-two
children you are merely conferring discomfort
and unhappiness on one family per year in a
nation of 88,000,000, which is not worth while."

It is the very same with copyright. One au-
thor per year produces a book which can outlive
the forty-two-year limit; that's all. This nation
can't produce two authors a year that can do it ;
the thing is demonstrably impossible. All that
the limited copyright can do is to take the bread
out of the mouths of the children of that one
author per year.

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

I made an estimate some years ago, when I
appeared before a committee of the House of
Lords, that we had published in this country
since the Declaration of Independence 220,000
books. They have all gone. They had all per-
ished before they were ten years old. It is only
one book in 1000 that can outlive the forty-two-
year limit. Therefore why put a limit at all?
You might as well limit the family to twenty-two
children.

If you recall the Americans in the nineteenth
century who wrote books that lived forty-two
years you will have to begin with Cooper; you
can follow with Washington Irving, Harriet
Beecher Stowe, Edgar Allan Poe, and there you
have to wait a long time. You come to Emerson,
and you have to stand still and look further.
You find Howells and T. B. Aldrich, and then
your numbers begin to run pretty thin, and you
question if you can name twenty persons in the
United States who in a whole century have writ-
ten books that would live forty-two years. Why,
you could take them all and put them on one
bench there [pointing]. Add the wives and chil-
dren and you could put the result on two or
three more benches.

One hundred persons — that is the little, insig-
nificant crowd whose bread-and-butter is to be
taken away for what purpose, for what profit to
anybody? You turn these few books into the

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hands of the pirate and of the legitimate pub-
lisher, too, and they get the profit that should
have gone to the wife and children.

When I appeared before that committee of the
House of Lords the chairman asked me what
limit I would propose, I said, " Perpetuity.' ' I
could see some resentment in his maimer, and he
said the idea was illogical, for the reason that it
has long ago been decided that there can be no
such thing as property in ideas. I said there was
property in ideas before Queen Anne's time;
they had perpetual copyright. He said, "What
is a book? A book is just built from base to roof
on ideas, and there can be no property in it."

I said I wished he could mention any kind of
property on this planet that had a pecuniary
value which was not derived from an idea or ideas.
He said real estate. I put a supposititious case,
a dozen Englishmen who travel through South
Africa and camp out, and eleven of them see
nothing at all; they are mentally blind. But
there is one in the party who knows what
this harbor means and what the lay of the land
means. To him it means that some day a rail-
way will go through here, and there on that har-
bor a great city will spring up. That is his idea.
And he has another idea, which is to go and trade
his last bottle of Scotch whiskey and his last horse-
blanket to the principal chief of that region and
buy a piece of land the size of Pennsylvania.

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

That was the value of an idea that the day would
come when the Cape to Cairo Railway would be
built.

Every improvement that is put upon the real
estate is the result of an idea in somebody's head.
The skyscraper is another idea; the railroad is
another; the telephone and all those things are
merely symbols which represent ideas. An and-
iron, a wash-tub, is the result of an idea that did
not exist before.

So if , as that gentleman said, a book does con-
sist solely of ideas, that is the best argument in
the world that it is property, and should not be
under any limitation at all. We don't ask for that.
Fifty years from now we shall ask for it.

I hope the bill will pass without any deleterious
amendments. I do seem to be extraordinarily
interested in a whole lot of arts and things that
I have got nothing to do with. It is a part of my
generous, liberal nature; I can't help it. I feel
the same sort of charity to eveiybody that was
manifested by a gentleman who arrived at home at
two o'clock in the morning from the club and was
feeling so perfectly satisfied with life, so happy,
and so comfortable, and there was his house weav-
ing, weaving, weaving around. He watched his
chance, and by and by when the steps got in his
neighborhood he made a jump and climbed up
and * got on the portico.

And the house went on weaving and weaving
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and weaving, but he watched the door, and when
it came around his way he plunged through it.
He got to the stairs, and when he went up on all
fours the house was so unsteady that he could
hardly make his way, but at last he got to the top
and raised his foot and put it on the top step.
But only the toe hitched on the step, and he
rolled down and fetched up on the bottom step,
with his arm around the newel-post, and he said:
"God pity the poor sailors out at sea on a night
like this."

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IN AID OF THE BLIND

Address at a Public Meeting op the New York

Association for Promoting the Interests

op the Blind at the Waldorp-

Astoria, March 29, 1906

IF you detect any awkwardness in my move-
ments and infelicities in my conduct I will offer
the explanation that I never presided at a meet-
ing of any kind before in my life, and that I do
find it out of my line. I supposed I could do any-
thing anybody else could, but I recognize that
experience helps, and I do feel the lack of that
experience. I don't feel as graceful and easy as
I ought to be in order to impress an audience. I
shall not pretend that I know how to umpire a
meeting like this, and I shall just take the humble
place of the Essex band.

There was a great gathering in a small New
England town about twenty-five years ago. I re-
member that circumstance because there was
something that happened at that time. It was a
great occasion. They gathered in the militia and
orators and everybody from all the towns around.
It was an extraordinary occasion.

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IN AID OF THE BLIND

The little local paper threw itself into ecstasies
of admiration and tried to do itself proud from
beginning to end. It praised the orators, the
militia, and all the bands that came from every-
where, and all this in honest country newspaper
detail, but the writer ran out of adjectives toward
the end. Having exhausted his whole magazine
of praise and glorification, he found he still had
one band left over. He had to say something
about it, and he said : "The Essex band done the
best it could."

I am an Essex band on this occasion, and I am
going to get through as well as inexperience and
good intentions will enable me. I have got all
the documents here necessary to instruct you in
the objects and intentions of this meeting and
also of the association which has called the meet-
ing. But they are too voluminous. I could not
pack those statistics into my head, and I had to
give it up. I shall have to just reduce all that
mass of statistics to a few salient facts. There
are too many statistics and figures for me. I
never could do anything with figures, never had
any talent for mathematics, never accomplished
anything in my efforts at that rugged study, and
to-day the only mathematics I know is multipli-
cation, and the minute I get away up in that, as
soon as I reach nine times seven —

[Mr. Clemens lapsed into deep thought for a
moment. He was trying to figure out nine times

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

seven, but it was a hopeless task, and he turned
to St. Clair McKelway, who sat near him. Mr.
McKelway whispered the answer, and the speaker
resumed:]

I've got it now. It's eighty-four. Well, I
can get that far all right with a little hesitation.
After that I am uncertain, and I can't manage a
statistic.

44 This association for the " —

[Mr. Clemens was in another dilemma. Again
he was obliged to turn to Mr. McKelway.]

Oh yes, for promoting the interests of the blind.
It's a long name. If I could I would write it out
for you and let you take it home and study it,
but I don't know how to spell it. And Mr. Car-
negie is down in Virginia somewhere. Well, any-
way, the object of that association which has been
recently organized, five months ago, in fact, is in
the hands of very, very energetic, intelligent, and
capable people, and they will push it to success
very surely, and all the more surely if you will
give them a little of your assistance out of your
pockets.

The intention, the purpose, is to search out all
the blind and find work for them to do so that
they may earn their own bread. Now it is dismal
enough to be blind — it is dreary, dreary life at
best, but it can be largely ameliorated by finding
something for these poor blind people to do with
their hands. The time passes so heavily that it

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IN AID OF THE BLIND

is never day or night with them, it is always night,
and when they have to sit with folded hands
and with nothing to do to amuse or entertain
or employ their minds, it is drearier and drear-
ier.

And then the knowledge they have that they
must subsist on charity, and so often reluctant
charity, it would renew their lives if they could
have something to do with their hands and pass
their time and at the same time earn their bread,
and know the sweetness of the bread which is the
result of the labor of one's own hands. They
need that cheer and pleasure. It is the only way
you can turn their night into day, to give them
happy hearts, the only thing you can put in the
place of the blessed sun. That you can do in the
way I speak of.

Blind people generally who have seen the light
know what it is to miss the light. Those who
have gone blind since they were twenty years old
— their lives are unendingly dreary. But they
can be taught to use their hands and to employ
themselves at a great many industries. That asso-
ciation from which this draws its birth in Cam-
bridge, Massachusetts, has taught its blind to make
many things. They make them better than most
people, and more honest than people who have
the use of their eyes. The goods they make are
readily salable. People like them. And so they
are supporting themselves, and it is a matter of
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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

cheer, cheer. They pass their time now not too
irksomely as they formerly did.

What this association needs and wants is $15,-
000. The figures are set down, and what the
money is for, and there is no graft in it or I would
not be here. And they hope to beguile that out
of your pockets, and you will find affixed to the
programme an opportunity, that little blank
which you will fill out and promise so much money
now or to-morrow or some time. Then, there is
another opportunity which is still better, and that
is that you shall subscribe an annual sum.

I have invented a good many useful things in
my time, but never anything better than that of
getting money out of people who don't want to
part with it. It is always for good objects, of
course. This is the plan: When you call upon
a person to contribute to a great and good object,
and you think he should furnish about $1000, he
disappoints you as like as not. Much the best
way to work him to supply that thousand dollars
is to split it into parts and contribute, say a hun-
dred dollars a year, or fifty, or whatever the sum
may be. Let him contribute ten or twenty a
year. He doesn't feel that, but he does feel it
when you call upon him to contribute a large
amount. When you get used to it you would
rather contribute than borrow money.

I tried it in Helen Keller's case. Mr. Hutton
wrote me in 1896 or 1897 when I was in London

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IN AID OF THE BLIND

and said: "The gentleman who has been so
liberal in taking care of Helen Keller has died
without making provision for her in his will, and
now they don't know what to do." They were
proposing to raise a fund, and he thought $50,000
enough to furnish an income of $2400 or $2500
a year for the support of that wonderful girl and
her wonderful teacher, Miss Sullivan, now Mrs.
Macy. I wrote to Mr. Hutton and said: "Go
on, get up your fund. It will be slow, but if you
want quick work, I propose this system," the
system I speak of, of asking people to contribute
such and such a sum from year to year and drop
out whenever they please, and he would find there
wouldn't be any difficulty, people wouldn't feel
the burden of it. And he wrote back saying he
had raised the $2400 a year indefinitely by that
system in a single afternoon. We would like to
do something just like that to-night. We will
take as many checks as you care to give. You
can leave your donations in the big room outside.
I knew once what it was to be blind. I shall
never forget that experience. I have been as
blind as anybody ever was for three or four hours,
and the sufferings that I endured and the mis-
haps and the accidents that are burning in my
memory make my sympathy rise when I feel for
the blind and always shall feel. I once went to
Heidelberg on an excursion. I took a clergyman
along with me, the Rev. Joseph Twichell, of

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

Hartford, who is still among the living despite
c that fact. I always travel with clergymen when
' \ I can. It is better for them, it is better for me.
j And any preacher who goes out with me in stormy
x weather and without a lightning rod is a good one.
The Reverend Twichell is one of those people
filled with patience and endurance, two good in-
gredients for a man travelling with me, so we
got along very well together. In that old town
they have not altered a house nor built one in
1500 years. We went to the inn and they placed
Twichell and me in a most colossal bedroom, the
largest I ever saw or heard of. It was as big as
this room.

I didn't take much notice of the place. I
didn't really get my bearings. I noticed Twichell
got a German bed about two feet wide, the kind
in which you've got to lie on your edge, because
there isn't room to lie on your back, and he was
way down south in- that big room, and I was way
up north at the other end of it, with a regular
Saraha in between.

We went to bed. Twichell went to sleep, but
then he had his conscience loaded and it was easy
for him to get to sleep. I couldn't get to sleep. It
was one of those torturing kinds of lovely summer
nights when you hear various kinds of noises now
and then. A mouse away off in the southwest.
You throw things at the mouse. That encourages
the mouse. But I couldn't stand it, and about

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IN AID OF THE BLIND

two o'clock I got up and thought I would give it
up and go out in the square where there was one
of those tinkling fountains, and sit on its brink
and dream, full of romance.

I got out of bed, and I ought to have lit a candle,
but I didn't think of it until it was too late. It
was the darkest place that ever was. There has
never been darkness any thicker than that. It
just lay in cakes.

I thought that before dressing I would accu-
mulate my clothes. I pawed around in the dark
and found everything packed together on the
floor except one sock. I couldn't get on the track
of that sock. It might have occurred to me that
maybe it was in the wash. But I didn't think of
that. I went excursioning on my hands and
knees. Presently I thought, "I am never going
to find it; I'll go back to bed again." That is
what I tried to do during the next three hours.
I had lost the bearings of that bed. I was going
in the wrong direction all the time. By-and-by
I came in collision with a chair and that encour-
aged me.

It seemed to me, as far as I could recollect,
there was only a chair here and there and yonder,
five or six of them scattered over this territory,
and I thought maybe after I found that chair I
might find the next one. Well, I did. And I
found another and another and another. I kept
going around on my hands and knees, having

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

those sudden collisions, and finally when I banged
into another chair I almost lost my temper. And
I raised up, garbed as I was, not for public exhibi-
tion, right in front of a mirror fifteen or sixteen
feet high.

I hadn't noticed the mirror; didn't know it was
there. And when I saw myself in the mirror I
was frightened out of my wits. I don't allow
any ghosts to bite me, and I took up a chair and
smashed at it. A million pieces. Then I re-
flected. That's the way I always do, and it's
unprofitable unless a man has had much experi-
ence that way and has clear judgment. And I
had judgment, and I would have had to pay for
that mirror if I hadn't recollected to say it was
Twichell who broke it.

Then I got down on my hands and knees and
went on another exploring expedition.

As far as I could remember there were six
chairs in that Oklahoma, and one table, a great
big heavy table, not a good table to hit with your
head when rushing madly along. In the course
of time I collided with thirty-five chairs and
tables enough to stock that dining-room out there.
It was a hospital for decayed furniture, and it was
in a worse condition when I got through with it.
I went on and on, and at last got to a place where
I could feel my way up, and there was a shelf. I
knew that wasn't in the middle of the room. Up to
that time I was afraid I had gotten out of the city.

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IN AID OF THE BLIND

I was very careful and pawed along that shelf,
and there was a pitcher of water about a foot high,
and it was at the head of TwichelTs bed, but I
didn't know it. I felt that pitcher going and I
grabbed at it, but it didn't help any and came
right down in TwichelTs face and nearly drowned
him. But it woke him up. I was grateful to
have company on any terms. He lit a match, and
there I was, way down south when I ought to
have been back up yonder. My bed was out of
sight it was so far away. You needed a telescope
to find it. Twichell comforted me and I scrubbed
him off and we got sociable.

But that night wasn't wasted. I had my pedom-
eter on my leg. Twichell and I were in a pe-
dometer match. Twichell had longer legs than
I. The only way I could keep up was to wear my
pedometer to bed. I always walk in my sleep,
and on this occasion I gained sixteen miles on him.
After all, I never found that sock. I never have
seen it from that day to this. But that adventure
taught me what it is to be blind. That was one
of the most serious occasions of my whole life,
yet I never can speak of it without somebody
thinking it isn't serious. You try it and see how
serious it is to be as the blind are and I was that
night.

[Mr. Clemens read several letters of regret. He
then introduced Joseph H. Choate, saying :]

It is now my privilege to present to you Mr.
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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

Choate. I don't have to really introduce him. I
don't have to praise him, or to flatter him. I
could say truly that in the forty-seven years
I have been familiarly acquainted with him he
has always been the handsomest man America has
ever produced. And I hope and believe he will
hold the belt forty-five years more. He has
served his country ably, faithfully, and brilliantly.
He stands at the summit, at the very top in the
esteem and regard of his countrymen, and if I
could say one word which would lift him any
higher in his countrymen's esteem and affection,
I would say that word whether it was true or not.

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DR. MARK TWAIN, FARMEOPATH

Address at the Annual Dinner op the New York
Post-Graduate Medical School and Hos-
pital, January 21, 1909

The president, Dr. George N. Miller, in introducing
Mr. Clemens, referred to his late experience with
burglars.

GENTLEMEN AND DOCTORS,— I am glad
to be among my own kind to-night. I was
once a sharpshooter, but now I practise a much
higher and equally as deadly a profession. It
wasn't so very long ago that I became a member
of your cult, and for the time I've been in the
business my record is one that can't be scoffed at.
As to the burglars, I am perfectly familiar with
these people. I have always had a good deal to
do with burglars — not officially, but through
their attentions to me. I never suffered any-
thing at the hand's of a burglar. They have in-
vaded my house time and time again. They
never got anything. Then those people who
burglarized our house in September — we got back
the plated ware they took off, we jailed them, and

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

I have been sorry ever since. They did us a great
service — they scared off all the servants in the
place.

I consider the Children's Theatre, of which I
am president, and the Post-Graduate Medical
School as the two greatest ihstitutions in the
country. This school, in bringing its twenty
thousand physicians from all parts of the country,
bringing them up to date, and sending them back
with renewed confidence, has surely saved hun-
dreds of thousands of lives which otherwise would
have been lost.

I have been practising now for seven months.
When I settled on my farm in Connecticut in
June I found the community very thinly settled
— and since I have been engaged in practice it has
become more thinly settled still. This gratifies me,
as indicating that I am making an impression
on my community. I suppose it is the same with
all of you.

I have always felt that I ought to do something
for you, and so I organized a Redding (Connecti-
cut) branch of the Post-Graduate School. I am
only a country farmer up there, but I am doing
the best I can.

Of course, the practice of medicine and surgery
in a remote country district has its disadvantages,
but in my case I am happy in a division of re-
sponsibility. I practise in conjunction with a
horse-doctor, a sexton, and an undertaker. The

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DR. MARK TWAIN

combination is air-tight, and once a man is stricken
in our district escape is impossible for him.

These four of us — three in the regular pro-
fession and the fourth an undertaker — are all
good men. There is Bill Ferguson, the Redding
undertaker. Bill is there in every respect. He is
a little lukewarm on general practice, and writes
his name with a rubber stamp. Like my old
Southern friend, he is one of the finest planters
anywhere.

Then there is Jim Ruggles, the horse-doctor.
Ruggles is one of the best men I have got. He
also is not much on general medicine, but he is
a fine horse-doctor. Ferguson doesn't make any
money off him.

You see, the combination started this way.
When I got up to Redding and had become a
doctor, I looked around to see what my chances
were for aiding in the great work. The first
thing I did was to determine what manner of
doctor I was to be. Being a Connecticut farmer,
I naturally consulted my farmacopia, and at once
decided to become a farmeopath.

Then I got circulating about, and got in touch
with Ferguson and Ruggles. Ferguson joined
readily in my ideas, but Ruggles kept saying
that, while it was all right for an undertaker to
get aboard, he couldn't see where it helped horses.

Well, we started to find out what was the
trouble with the community, and it didn't take

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

long to find out that there was just one disease,
and that was race-suicide. And driving about
the country-side I was told by my fellow-farmers
that it was the only rational human and valuable
disease. But it is cutting into our profits so that
we'll either have to stop it or we'll have to move.

We've had some funny experiences up there
in Redding. Not long ago a fellow came along
with a rolling gait and a distressed face. We
asked him what was the matter. We always
hold consultations on every case, as there isn't
business enough for four. He said he didn't
know, but that he was a sailor, and perhaps that
might help us to give a diagnosis. We treated
him for that, and I never saw a man die more
peacefully.

That same afternoon my dog Tige tteed an
African gentleman. We chained up the dog, and
then the gentleman came down and said he had
appendicitis. We asked him if he wanted to be
cut open, and he said yes, that he'd like to know
if there was anything in it. So we cut him open
and found nothing in him but darkness. So we
diagnosed his case as infidelity, because he was
dark inside. Tige is a very clever dog, and aids
us greatly.

The other day a patient came to me and in-
quired if I was old Doctor Clemens —

As a practitioner I have given a great deal of
my attention to Blight's disease. I have made

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DR. MARK TWAIN

some rules for treating it that may be valuable.

Listen :

Rule i. When approaching the bedside of one

whom an all-wise President — I mean an all- wise

Providence — well, anyway, it's the same thing —

has seen fit to afflict with disease — well, the rule

is simple, even if it is old-fashioned.

Rule 2. I've forgotten just what it is, but —
Rule 3. This is always indispensable: Bleed

your patient.

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MISSOURI UNIVERSITY SPEECH

Address Delivered June 4, 1902, at Columbia, Mo.

When the name of Samuel L. Clemens was called
the humorist stepped forward, put his hand to his hair,
and apparently hesitated. There was a dead silence
for a moment. Suddenly the entire audience rose and
stood in silence. Some one began to spell out the word
Missouri with an interval between the letters. All
joined in. Then the house again became silent. Mr.
Clemens broke the spell:

AS you are all standing [he drawled in his char-
r\ acteristic voice], I guess, I suppose I had
better stand too.

[Then came a laugh and loud cries for a speech.
As the great humorist spoke of his recent visit to
Hannibal, his old home, his voice trembled.]

You cannot know what a strain it was on my
emotions [he said]. In fact, when I found my-
self shaking hands with persons I had not seen for
fifty years and looking into wgnkled faces that
were so young and joyous when I last saw them,
I experienced emotions that I had never expected,
and did not know were in me. I was profoundly
moved and saddened to think that this was the

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MISSOURI UNIVERSITY SPEECH

last time, perhaps, that I would ever behold those
kind old faces and dear old scenes of childhood.

[The humorist then changed to a lighter mood,
and for a time the audience was in a continual
roar of laughter. He was particularly amused
at the eulogy on himself read by Gardiner La-
throp in conferring the degree.] He has a fine op-
portunity to distinguish himself [said Mr. Clemens]
by telling the truth about me.

I have seen it stated in print that as a boy I
had been guilty of stealing peaches, apples, and
watermelons. I read a story to this effect very
closely not long ago, and I was convinced of one
thing, which was that the man who wrote it was
of the opinion that it was wrong to steal, and that
I had not acted right in doing so. I wish now,
however, to make an honest statement, which is
that I do not believe, in all my checkered career,
I stole a ton of peaches.

One night I stole — I mean I removed — a water-
melon from a wagon while the owner was attend-
ing to another customer. I crawled off to a se-
cluded spot, where I found that it was green. It
was the greenest melon in the Mississippi Valley.
Then I began to reflect. I began to be sorry. I
wondered what George Washington would have
done had he been in my place. I thought a long
time, and then suddenly felt that strange feeling
which comes to a man with a good resolution, and
took up that watermelon and took it back to its

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

owner. I handed him the watermelon and told
him to reform. He took my lecture much to
heart, and, when he gave me a good one in place
of the green melon, I forgave him.

I told him that I would still be a customer of
his, and that I cherished no ill-feeling because of
the incident — that would remain green in my
memory.

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BUSINESS

The alumni of Eastman College gave their annual
banquet, March 30, 1901, at the Y. M. C.A. Building.
Mr. James G. Cannon, of the Fourth National Bank,
made the first speech of the evening, after which Mr.
Clemens was introduced by Mr. Bailey as the personal
friend of Tom Sawyer, who was one of the types of suc-
cessful business men.

MR. CANNON has furnished me with texts
enough to last as slow a speaker as myself
all the rest of the night. I took exception to the
introducing of Mr. Cannon as a great financier, as
if he were the only great financier present. I
am a financier. But my methods are not the
same as Mr. Cannon's.

I cannot say that I have turned out the great
business man that I thought I was when I began
life. But I am comparatively young yet, and
may learn. I am rather inclined to believe that
what troubled me was that I got the big-head
early in the game. I want to explain to you a
few points of difference between the principles of
business as I see them and the so : : at Mr. Cannon
believes in.

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

He says that the primary rule of business success
is loyalty to your employer. That's all right-
as a theory. What is the matter with loyalty to
yourself? As nearly as I can understand Mr.
Cannon's methods, there is one great drawback
to them. He wants you to work a great deal.
Diligence is a good thing, but taking things easy
is much more — restful. My idea is that the em-
ployer should be the busy man, and the employee
the idle one. The employer should be the wor-
ried man, and the employee the happy one. And
why not? He gets the salary. My plan is to
get another man to do the work for me, In that
there's more repose. What I want is repose first,
last, and all the time.

Mr. Cannon says that there are three cardinal
rules of business success; they are diligence,
honesty, arid truthfulness. Well, diligence is all
right. Let it go as a theory. Honesty is the
best policy — when there is money in it. But
truthfulness is one of the most dangerous — why,
this man is misleading you.

I had an experience to-day with my wife which
illustrates this. I was acknowledging a belated
invitation to another dinner for this evening,
which seemed to have been sent about ten days
ago. It only reached me this morning. I was
mortified at the discourtesy into which I had
been brought by this delay, and wondered what
was being thought of me by my hosts. As I had

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BUSINESS

accepted your invitation, of course I had to send
regrets to my other friends.

When I started to write this note my wife came
up and stood looking over my shoulder. Women
always want to know what is going on. Said she :
44 Should not that read in the third person?" I
conceded that it should, put aside what I was
writing, and commenced over again. That seemed
to satisfy her, and so she sat down and let me
proceed. I then — finished my first note — and so
sent what I intended. I never could have done
this if I had let my wife know the truth about it.
Here is what I wrote :

To the Ohio Society, — I have at this moment re-
ceived a most kind invitation (eleven days old) from
Mr. Southard, president; and a like one (ten days
old) from Mr. Bryant, president of the Press Club.
I thank the society cordially for the compliment of
these invitations, although I am booked elsewhere
and cannot come.

But, oh, I should like to know the name of the
Lightning Express by which they were forwarded;
for I owe a friend a dozen chickens, and I believe it
will be cheaper to send eggs instead, and let them
develop on the road.

Sincerely yours, Mark Twain.

I want to tell you of some of my experiences in
business, and then I will be in a position to lay
down one general rule for the guidance of those
who want to succeed in business. My first effort

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was about twenty-five years ago. I took hold
of an invention — I don't know now what it was
all about, but some one came to me and told me
it was a good thing, and that there was lots of
money in it. He persuaded me to invest $15,000,
and I lived up to my beliefs by engaging a man
to develop it. To make a long story short, I
sunk $40,000 in it.

Then I took up the publication of a book. I

/ called in a publisher and said to him: "I want

/ you to publish this book along lines which I shall

' lay down. I am the employer, and you are the

employee. I am going to show them some new

kinks in the publishing business. And I want

you to draw on me for money as you go along,"

which he did. He drew on me for $56,000. Then

I asked him to take the book and call it off. But

he refused to do that.

My next venture was with a machine for doing
something or other. I knew less about that than
I did about the invention. But I sunk $170,000
in the business, and I can't for the life of me
recollect what it was the machine was to do.

I was still undismayed. You see, one of the

'- strong points about my business life was that I

never gave up. I undertook to publish General

. Grant's book, and made $140,000 in six months.

My axiom is, to succeed in business: avoid my

example.

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CARNEGIE THE BENEFACTOR

At the dinner given in honor of Andrew Carnegie
by the Lotos Club, March 17, 1909, Mr. Clemens ap-
peared in a white suit from head to feet. He wore
a white double-breasted coat, white trousers, and white
shoes. The only relief was a big black cigar, which he
confidentially informed the company was not from his
usual stack bought at $3 per barrel.

THE State of Missouri has for its coat of arms
a barrel-head with two Missourians, one on
each side of it, and mark the motto — " United We
Stand, Divided We FalL" Mr. Carnegie, this
evening, has suffered from compliments. It is
interesting to hear what people will say about a
man. Why, at the banquet given by this club
in my honor, Mr. Carnegie had the inspiration for
which the club is now honoring him. If Dun-
fermline contributed so much to the United States
in contributing Mr. Carnegie, what would have
happened if all Scotland had turned out ? These
Dunfermline folk have acquired advantages in
coming to America.

Doctor McKelway paid the top compliment,
the cumulation, when he said of Mr. Carnegie:

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" There is a man who wants to pay more taxes
than he is charged." Richard Watson Gilder
did very well for a poet. He advertised his
magazine. He spoke of hiring Mr. Carnegie — the
next thing he will be trying to hire me.

If I undertook to pay compliments I would do
it stronger than any others have done it, for what
Mr. Carnegie wants are strong compliments.
Now, the other side of seventy, I have preserved,
as my chiefest virtue, modesty.

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ON POETRY, VERACITY, AND SUICIDE

Address at a Dinner op the Manhattan Dick-
ens Fellowship, New York City,
February 7, 1906

This dinner was in commemorationof the ninety-fourth
anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens, On an-
other occasion Mr. Clemens told the same story with
variations and a different conclusion to the University
Settlement Society.

I ALWAYS had taken an interest in young
people who wanted to become poets. I re-
member I was particularly interested in one bud-
ding poet when I was a reporter. His name
was Butter.

One day he came to me and said, disconsolately,
that he was going to commit suicide — he was
tired of life, not being able to express his thoughts
in poetic form, f Butter asked me what I thought
of the idea. *r \f * . * v * ^: ,M ^ ft^ . v »

I said I would; that it was a good idea. " Youi
can do me a friendly turn. You go off in a
private place and do it there, and I'll get it all.
You do it, and I'll do as much for you some time.'!/

At first he determined to drown himself. Drown-
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ing is so nice and clean, and writes up so well in
a newspaper.

But things ne'er do go smoothly in weddings,
suicides, or courtships. Only there at the edge
of the water, where Butter was to end himsdlf , lay
a life-preserver — a big round canvas one, which
would float after the scrap-iron was soaked out of it.

Butter wouldn't kill himself with the life-pre-
server in sight, and so I had an idea. I took it
to a pawnshop, and soaked it for a revolver. The
pawnbroker didn't think much of the exchange,
but when I explained the situation he acquiesced.
We went up on top of a high building, and this is
what happened to the poet:

He put the revolver to his forehead and blew
a tunnel straight through his head. The tunnel
was about the size of your finger. You could
look right through it. The job was complete;
there was nothing in it.

Well, after that that man never could write
prose, but he could write poetry. He could write
it after he had blown his brains out. There is
lots of that talent all over the country, but the
trouble is they don't develop it.
^ I am suffering now from the fact that I, who
have told the truth a good many times in my
life, have lately received more letters than any-
body else urging me to lead a righteous life. I
have more friends who want to see me develop
on a high level than anybody else.

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POETRY, VERACITY, SUICIDE

Young John D. Rockefeller, two weeks ago,
taught his Bible class all about veracity, and why /
it was better that everybody should always keep \/
a plentiful supply on hand. Some of the letters I
have received suggest that I ought to attend his
class and learn, too. Why, I know Mr. Rocke-
feller, and he is a good fellow. He is competent
in many ways to teach a Bible class, but when it
comes to veracity he is only thirty-five years old.
I'm seventy years old. I have been familiar with
veracity twice as long as he.

And the story about George Washington and
his little hatchet has also been suggested to me
in these letters — in a fugitive way, as if I needed
some of George Washington and his hatchet in
my constitution. Why, dear me, they overlook
the real point in that story. The point is not the
one that is usually suggested, and you can readily
see that.

The point is not that George said to his father,
"Yes, father, I cut down the ch^y-tree; I can't
tell a lie," but that the little boy — only seven
years old — should have his sagacity developed
under such circumstances. He was a boy wise
beyond his years. His conduct then was a proph-
ecy of later years.f Yes, I think he was the most
remarkable man the country ever produced — up
to my time, anyway.^

Now then, little George realized that circum-
stantial evidence was against him. He knew

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that his father would know from the size of the
chips that no full-grown hatchet cut that tree
down, and that no man would have haggled it so.
He knew that his father would send around the
plantation and inquire for a small boy with a
hatchet, and he had the wisdom to come out and
confess it. Now, the idea that his father was
overjoyed when he told little George that he
would rather have him cut down a thousand
cheery-trees than tell a lie is all nonsense. What
did he really mean ? Why, that he was absolutely
astonished that he had a son who had the chance
to tell a lie and didn't,

I admire old George — if that was his name— for
his discernment. He knew when he said that his
son couldn't tell a lie that he was stretching it a
good deal. He wouldn't have to go to John D.
Rockefeller's Bible class to find that out. The
way the old George Washington story goes down
it doesn't do anybody any good. It only dis-
courages people who can tell a lie.

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WELCOME HOME

Address at the Dinner in His Honor at the
Lotos Club, November io* 1900

In August, 1895, just before sailing for Australia,
Mr. Clemens issued the following statement:

" It has been reported that I sacrificed, for the bene-
fit of the creditors, the property of the publishing firm
whose financial backer I was, and that I am now
lecturing for my own benefit.

" This is an error. I intend the lectures, as well as
the property, for the creditors. The law recognizes
no mortgage on a man's brains, and a merchant who
has given up all he has may take advantage of the
laws of insolvency and may start free again for him-
self. But I am not a business man, and honor is a
harder master than the law. It cannot compromise
for less than one hundred cents on a dollar, and its
debts are never outlawed.

" I had a two-thirds interest in the publishing firm
whose capital I furnished. If the firm had prospered
I would have expected to collect two-thirds of the
profits. As it is, I expect to pay all the debts. My
partner has no resources, and I do not look for as-
sistance to my wife, whose contributions in cash
from her own means have nearly equalled the claims
of all the creditors combined. She has taken nothing ;

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on the contrary, she has helped and intends to help
me to satisfy the obligations due to the rest of the
creditors.

" It is my intention to ask my creditors to accept
that as a legal discharge, and trust to my honor to
pay the other fifty per cent, as fast as I can earn it.
From my reception thus far on my lecturing tour, I
am confident that if I live I can pay off the last debt
within four years.

•• After which, at the age of sixty-four, I can make
a fresh and unincumbered start in life. I am going
to Australia, India, and South Africa, and next year
I hope to make a tour of the great cities of the
United States."

I THANK you all out of my heart for this
fraternal welcome, and it seems almost too
fine, almost too magnificent, for a humble Mis-
sourian such as I am, far from his native haunts
on the banks of the Mississippi ; yet my modesty
is in a degree fortified by observing that I am not
the only Missourian who has been honored here
to-night, for I see at this very table — here is a
Missourian [indicating Mr. McKelway], and there
is a Missourian [indicating Mr. Depew], and there
is another Missourian — and Hendrix and Clemens ;
and last but not least, the greatest Missourian of
them all — here he sits — Tom Reed, who has al-
ways concealed his birth till now. And since I
have been away I know what has been happening
in his case: he has deserted politics, and now is
leading a creditable life. He has reformed, and

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WELCOME HOME

God prosper him; and I judge, by a remark which
he made up-stairs awhile ago, that he had found
a new business that is utterly suited to his make
and constitution, and all he is doing now is that
he is around raising the average of personal
beauty.

But I am grateful to the president for the kind
words which he has said of me, and it is not for
me to say whether these praises were deserved or
not. I prefer to accept them just as they stand,
without concerning myself with the statistics
upon which they have been built, but only with
that large matter, that essential matter, the good-
fellowship, the kindliness, the magnanimity, and
generosity that prompted their utterance. Well,
many things have happened since I sat here be-
fore, and now that I think of it, the president's
reference to the debts which were left by the
bankrupt firm of Charles L. Webster & Co. gives
me an opportunity to say a word which I very
much wish to say, not for myself, but for ninety-
five men and women whom I shall always hold in
high esteem and in pleasant remembrance — the
creditors of that firm. They treated me well;
they treated me handsomely. There were ninety-
six of them, and by not a finger's weight did
ninety-five of them add to the burden of that
time for me. Ninety-five out of the ninety-six —
they didn't indicate by any word or sign that they
were anxious about their money. They treated

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me well, and I shall not forget it; I could not for-
get it if I wanted to. Many of them said, ' * Don't
you worry, don't you hurry''; that's what they
said. Why, if I could have that kind of creditors
always, and that experience, I would recognize it
as a personal loss to be out of debt. I owe those
ninety-five creditors a debt of homage, and I
pay it now in such measure as one may pay so
fine a debt in mere words. Yes, they said that
very thing. I was not personally acquainted with
ten of them, and yet they said, "Don't you worry,
and don't you hurry." I know that phrase by
heart, and if all the other music should perish out
of the world it would still sing to me. I appre-
ciate that; I am glad to say this word; people say
so much about me, and they forget those creditors.
They were handsomer than I was — or Tom Reed.
Oh, you have been doing many things in this
time that I have been absent; you have done lots
of things, some that are well worth remembering,
too. Now, we have fought a righteous war gince
I have gone, and that is rare in history — a right-
eous war is so rare that it is almost unknown in
history; but by the grace of that war we set
Cuba free, and we joined her to those three or
four nations that exist on this earth; and we
started out to set those poor Filipinos free, too,
and why, why, why that most righteous purpose
of ours has apparently miscarried I suppose I
never shall know.

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WELCOME HOME

But we have made a most creditable record in
China in these days — our sound and level-headed
administration has made a most creditable record
over there, and there are some of the Powers that
cannot say that by any means. The Yellow
Terror is threatening this world to-day. It is
looming vast and ominous on that distant horizon.
I do not know what is going to be the result of
that Yellow Terror, but our government has had
no hand in evoking it, and let's be happy in that
and proud of it.

We have nursed free silver, we watched by its
cradle; we have done the best we could to raise
that child, but those pestiferous Republicans have
— well, they keep giving it the measles every
chance they get, and we never shall raise that
child. Well, that's no matter — there's plenty of
other things to do, and we must think of some-
thing else. Well, we have tried a President four
years, criticised him and found fault with him
the whole time, and turned around a day or two
ago with votes enough to spare to elect another.
O consistency! consistency! thy name — I don't
know what thy name is — Thompson will do — any
name will do — but you see there is the fact, there is
the consistency* Then we have tried for governor
an illustrious Rough Rider, and we liked him so
much in that great office that now we have made
him Vice-President— not in oMer that that office
shall give him distinction, but that he may con-

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fer distinction upon that office. And it's needed,
too — it's needed. And now, for a while anyway,
wq, shall not be stammering and embarrassed when
a stranger asks us, "What is the name of the
Vice-President?" This one is known; this one
is pretty well known, pretty widely known, and
in some quarters favorably. I am not accustomed
to dealing in these fulsome compliments, and I
am probably overdoing it a little; but — well, my
old affectionate admiration for Governor Roose-
velt has probably betrayed me into the com-
plimentary excess; but I know him, and you
know him; and if you give him rope enough — I
mean if — oh yes, he will justify that compliment;
leave it just as it is. And now we have put in his
place Mr. Odell, another Rough Rider, I suppose;
all the fat things go to that profession now. Why,
I could have been a Rough Rider myself if I had
known that this political Klondike was going to
open up, and I would have been a Rough Rider
if I could have gone to war on an automobile —
but not on a horse! No, I know the horse too
well ; I have known the horse in war and in peace,
and there is no place where a horse is comfortable.
The horse has too many caprices, and he is too
much given to initiative. He invents too many
new ideas. No, I don't want anything to do
with a horse.

And then we have taken Chauncey Depew out
of a useful and active life and made him a Senator

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WELCOME HOME

— embalmed him, corked him up. And I am not
grieving. That man has said many a true thing
about me in his time, and I always said something
would happen to him. Look at that [pointing to
Mr. Depew] gilded mummy! He has made my
life a sorrow to me at many a banquet on both
sides of the ocean, and now he has got it. Perish
the hand that pulls that cork!

All these things have happened, all these things
have come to pass, while I have been away, and
it just shows how little a Mugwump can be missed
in a cold, unfeeling world, even when he is the
last one that is left — a Grand Old Party all by
himself. And there is another thing that has
happened, perhaps the most imposing event of
them all: the institution called the Daughters of
the Crown — the Daughters of the Royal Crown
— has established itself and gone into business.
Now, there's an American idea for you; there's
an idea born of God knows what kind of special-
ized insanity, but not softening of the brain — you
cannot soften a thing that doesn't exist — the
Daughters of the Royal Crown! Nobody eligible
but American descendants of Charles II. Dear
me, how the fancy product of that old harem
still holds out!

Well, I am truly glad to foregather with you

again, and partake of the bread and salt of this

hospitable house once more. Seven years ago,

when I was your guest here, when I was old and

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despondent, you gave me the grip and the word
that lift a man up and make him glad to be alive ;
and now I come back from my exile young again,
fresh and alive, and ready to begin life once
more, and your welcome puts the finishing touch
upon my restored youth and makes it real to me,
and not a gracious dream that must vanish with
the morning. I thank you.

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AlSr tNDELIVERED SPEECH

The steamship St. Paul was to have been launched
from Cramp's shipyard in Philadelphia on March 25,
1895. After the launching a luncheon was to nave
been given, at which Mr. Clemens was to make a
speech. Just before the final word was given a re-
porter asked Mr. Clemens for a copy of his speech to
be delivered at the luncheon. To facilitate the work
of the reporter he loaned him a typewritten copy of the
speech. It happened, however, that when the blocks
were knocked away the big ship refused to budge, and
no amount of labor could move her an inch. She had
stuck fast upon the ways. As a result, the launching
was postponed for a week or two; but in the mean time
Mr. Clemens had gone to Europe. Years after a re-
porter called on Mr. Clemens and submitted the manu-
script of the speech, which was as follows:

DAY Si ter to-morrow I sail for England in a
ship of this line, the Paris. It will be my
fourteenth crossing in three years and a half.
Therefore, my presence here, as you see, is quite
natural, quite commercial. I am interested in
ships. They interest me more now than hbtfels do.
When a new ship is launched I feel a desire td go
£tnd see if she will be good quarters for me to live

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in, particularly if she belongs to this line, for it is
by this line that I have done most of my ferrying.

People wonder why I go so much. Well, I go
partly for my health, partly to familiarize myself
with the road. I have gone over the same road
so many times now that I know all the whales
that belong along the route, and latterly it is an
embarrassment to me to meet them, for they do
not look glad to see me, but annoyed, and they
seem to say: "Here is this old derelict again."

Earlier in life this would have pained me and
made me ashamed, but I am older now, and when
I am behaving myself, and .doing right, I do not
care for a whale's opinion about me. When we
are young we generally estimate an opinion by
the size of the person that holds it, but later we
find that that is an uncertain rule, for we realize
that there are times when a hornet's opinion dis-
turbs us more than an emperor's.

I do not mean that I care nothing at all for a
whale's opinion, for that would be going to too
great a length. Of course, it is better to have the
good opinion of a whale than his disapproval;
but my position is that if you cannot have a
whale's good opinion, except at some sacrifice of
principle or personal dignity, it is better to try
to live without it. That is my idea about whales.

Yes, I have gone over that same route so often
that I know my way without a compass, just by
the waves. I know all the large waves and a

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AN UNDELIVERED SPEECH

good many of the small ones. Also the sun-
sets. I know every sunset and where it belongs
just by its color. Necessarily, then, I do not make
the passage now for scenery. That is all gone by.

What I prize most is safety, and in the second
place swift transit and handiness. These are best
furnished by the American line, whose water-
tight compartments have no passage through
them, no doors to be left open, and consequently
no way for water to get from one of them to an-
other in time of collision. If you nullify the peril
which collisions threaten you with, you nullify
the only very serious peril .which attends voyages
in the great liners of our day, and makes voyaging
safer than staying at home.

When the Paris was half-torn to pieces some
years ago, enough of the Atlantic ebbed and flowed
through one end of her, during her long agony, to
sink the fleets of the world if distributed among
them; but she floated in perfect safety, and no
life was lost. In time of collision the rock of
Gibraltar is not safer than the Paris and other
great ships of this line. This seems to be the only
great line in the world that takes a passenger
from metropolis to metropolis without the inter-
vention of tugs and barges or bridges — takes him
through -without breaking bulk, so to speak.

On the English side he lands at a dock; on the
dock a special train is waiting; in an hour and
three-quarters he is in London. Nothing could

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be handier. If your journey were from a sand-pit
on our side to a lighthouse on the other, you
could make it quicker by other lines, but that is
not the case. The journey is from the city of
New York to the city of London, and no line can
do that journey quicker than this one, nor any-
where near as conveniently and handily. And
when the passenger lands on our side he lands oil
the American side of the river, not in the prov*
inces. As a very learned man said on the last
voyage (he is head quartermaster of the New
York land garboard streak of the middle watch) :
"When we land a passenger on the American side
there's nothing betwix him and his hotel but hell
and the hackman."

I am glad, with you and the nation, to welcome
the new ship. She is another pride, another con-
solation, for a great country whose mighty fleets
have all vanished, and which has almost forgotten
what it is to fly its flag to sea. I am not sure
as to which St. Paul she is named for. Some think
it is the one that is on the upper Mississippi, but
the head quartermaster told me it was the one
that killed Goliath. But it is not important.
No matter which it is, let us give her hearty wel-
come and godspeed.

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SIXTY-SEVENTH BIRTHDAY

At the Metropolitan Club, New York,
November 28, 1902

Address at a dinner given in honor of Mr. Clemens
by Colonel Harvey, President of Harper & Brothers.
i

J THINK I ought to be allowed to talk as long as
I want to, for the reason that I have can-
celled all my winter's engagements of every kind,
for good and sufficient reasons, and am making
no new engagements for this winter, and, there-
fore, this is the only chance I shall have to dis-
embowel my skull for a year — close the mouth in
that portrait for a year. I want to offer thanks
and Jiomage to the chairman for this innovation
which he has introduced here, which is an imr
proyement, as I consider it, on the old-fashioned
style of conducting occasions like this. That was
bad — that was a bad, bad, bad arrangement.
Under that old custom the chairman got up and
made a speech, he introduced the prisoner at the
bar, and. covered him all over with compliments*
nothing but compliments, not a thing, but com-
pliments, never a slur, and sat down and left that

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man to get up and talk without a text. You can-
not talk on compliments ; that is not a text. No
modest person, and I was born one, can talk on
compliments. A man gets up and is filled to the
eyes with happy emotions, but his tongue is tied;
he has nothing to say; he is in the condition of
Doctor Rice's friend who came home drunk and
explained it to his wife, and his wife said to him,
"John, when you have drunk all the whiskey you
want, you ought to ask for sarsaparilla." He
said, "Yes, but when I have drunk all the whiskey
I want I can't say sarsaparilla." And so I think
it is much better to leave a man unmolested until
the testimony and pleadings are all in. Other-
wise he is dumb — he is at the sarsaparilla stage.

Before I get to the higgledy-piggledy point, as
Mr. Howells suggested I do, I want to thank you,
gentlemen, for this very high honor you are doing
me, and I am quite competent to estimate it at
its value. I see around me captains of all the
illustrious industries, most distinguished men;
there are more than fifty here, and I believe I
know thirty-nine of them well. I could probably
borrow money from — from the others, anyway.
It is a proud thing to me, indeed, to see such a
distinguished company gather here on such an
occasion as this, when there is no foreign prince
to be feted — when you have come here not to do
honor to hereditary privilege and ancient lineage,
but to do reverence to mere moral excellence and

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SIXTY-SEVENTH BIRTHDAY

elemental veracity — and, dear me, how old it seems
to make me! I look around me and I see three or
four persons I have known so many, many years.
I have known Mr. Secretary Hay — John Hay, as
the nation and the rest of his friends love to call
him — I have known John Hay and Tom Reed and
the Reverend Twichell close upon thirty-six years.
Close upon thirty-six years I have known those
venerable men. I have known Mr. Howells nearly
thirty-four years, and I knew Chauncey Depew
before he could walk straight, and before he
learned to tell the truth. Twenty-seven years
ago I heard him make the most noble and elo-
quent and beautiful speech that has ever fallen
from even his capable lips. Tom Reed said that
my principal defect was inaccuracy of statement.
Well, suppose that that is true. What's the use
of telling the truth all the time ? I never tell the
truth about Tom Reed — but that is his defect,
truth; he speaks the truth always. Tom Reed
has a good heart, and he has a good intellect, but
he hasn't any judgment. Why, when Tom Reed
was invited to lecture to the Ladies' Society for
the Procreation or Procrastination, or something,
of morals, I don't know what it was — advance-
ment, I suppose, of pure morals — he had the im-
mortal indiscretion to begin by saying that some
of us can't be optimists, but by judiciously utiliz-
ing the opportunities that Providence puts in our
way we can all be bigamists. You perceive his

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limitations. Anything he has in his, mind he
states, if he thinks it is true. Well, that was truei
but that was no place to say it — so they fired him
out.

A lot of accounts have been settled here to-
night for me; I have held grudges against some
of these people, but they have all been wiped out
by the very handsome compliments that have
been paid me. Even Wayne MacVeagh — I have
had a grudge against him many years. The first
tiine I sdw Wayne MacVeagh was at a private
dinner-party at Charles A. Dana's, and When I
gdt there he was clattering along, and I tried tp
get a word in here and there ; but you know what
Wayne MacVeagh is when he is started, and I
could not get in five words to his one— or oiie word
to his five. I struggled along and struggled along,
and— well, I wanted to tell and I was trying to tell
a dream I had had the night before, and it was a
remarkable dream, a dream worth people's while
to listen to, a dream recounting Sam Jones the
revivalist's reception in heaven. I was on a train,
and was approaching the celestial way-station —
I had a through ticket — and I noticed a man sit-
ting alongside of me asleep, and he had his txqtet
in his hat. He was the remains of the Arch-
bishop of Canterbuiy; I recognized him by his
photograph. I had nothing against him, so. I took
his ticket and let him have mine. . He didn't ob-
ject — he wasn't in a condition to object — and

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SIXTY-SEVENTH BIRTHDAY

presently when the train stopped at the heavenly
station— well, I got off, and he went on by request
—but there they all were, the angels, you know,
millions of them, every one with a torch; they
had arranged for a torch-light propession; they
were expecting the Archbishop, and when I got
off they started to raise a shout, but it didn't
materialize. I don't know whether they were
disappointed. I suppose they had a lot of super-
stitious ideas about the Archbishop and what he
should look like, and I didn't fill the bill, and I
was trying to explain to Saint Peter, and was
doing it in the German tongue, because I didn't
want to be too explicit. Well, I found it was no
use, I couldn't get along, for Wayne MacVeagh was
occupying the whole place, and I said to Mr. Dana,
' 'What is the matter with that man ? Who is that
man with the long tongue? What's the trouble
with him, that long, lank cadaver, old oil-derrick
out of a job — who is that ?" ' ' Well, npw," Mr. Dana
said, "you don't want to meddle with him; you
had better keep quiet; just keep quiet, because
that's a bad man. Talk! He was born to talk.
Don't let him get out with you; he'll skin yotu"
I said, "I have been skinned, skinned, and skinned
for yearg, there is nothing left." He said, "Oh,
you'll find there is; that man is the very see4
and inspiration of that proverb which says, *Nq
matter how close you skin an onion, a clever man
can always peel it again.' ' ' Well, I reflected and

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I quieted down. That would never occur to Tom
Reed. He's got no discretion. Well, MacVeagh
is just the same man; he hasn't changed a bit in
all those years; he has been peeling Mr. Mitchell
lately. That's the kind of man he is.

Mr. Howells — that poem of his is admirable;
that's the way to treat a person. Howells has a
peculiar gift for seeing the merits of people,
and he has always exhibited them in my favor.
Howells has never written anything about me
that I couldn't read six or seven times a day; he
is always just and always fair; he has written
more appreciatively of me than any one in this
world, and published it in the North American
Review. He did me the justice to say that my
intentions — he italicized that — that my inten-
tions were always good, that I wounded people's
conventions rather than their convictions. Now,
I wouldn't want anything handsomer than that
said of me. I would rather wait, with anything
harsh I might have to say, till the convictions
become conventions. Bangs has traced me all
the way down. He can't find that honest man,
but I will look for him in the looking-glass when
I get home. It was intimated by the Colonel that
it is New England that makes New York and
Guilds up this country and makes it great, over-
looking the fact that there's a lot of people here
who came from elsewhere, like John Hay from
away out West, and Howells from Ohio, and St.

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SIXTY-SEVENTH BIRTHDAY

Clair McKelway and me from Missouri, and we
are doing what we can to build up New York a
little — elevate it. Why, when I was living in
that village of Hannibal, Missouri, on the banks
of the Mississippi, and Hay up in the town of War-
saw, also on the banks of the Mississippi River —
it is an emotional bit of the Mississippi, and when
it is low water you have to climb up to it on a
ladder, and when it floods you have to hunt for
it with a deep-sea lead — but it is a great and
beautiful country. In that old time it was a para-
dise for simplicity — it was a simple, simple life,
cheap but comfortable, and full of sweetness, and
there was nothing of this rage of modern civiliza-
tion there at all. It was a delectable land. I
went out there last June, and I met in that town of
Hannibal a schoolmate of mine, John Briggs,
whom I had not seen for more than fifty years.
I tell you, that was a meeting! That pal whom
I had known as a little boy long ago, and knew
now as a stately man three or four inches over
six feet and browned by exposure to many climes,
he was back there to see that old place again. We
spent a whole afternoon going about here and
there and yonder, and hunting up the scenes
and talking of the crimes which we had committed
so long ago. It was a heartbreaking delight,*
full of pathos, laughter, and tears, all mixed to-
gether; and we called the roll of the boys and
girls that we picnicked and sweethearted with

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so many years ago, and there were hardly half
a dozen of them left; the rest were in their
graves; and we went up .there on the summit of
that hill, a treasured place in my memory, the
summit of Holiday's Hill, and looked out again
over that magnificent panorama of the Mississippi
River, sweeping along league after league, a level
green paradise on one side, and retreating capes
and promontories as far as you could see on the
other, fading away in the soft, rich lights of the
remote distance. I recognized then that I was
seeing now the most enchanting river view the
planet could furnish. I never knew it When I
was a boy; it took an educated eye that had
travelled over the globe to know and appreciate
it; and John said, "Can you point out the place
where Bear Creek used to be before the railrodd
came?" I said, "Yes, it ran along yonder."
"And ban you point out the swiniming-hble?"
"Yes, out there." And he s&id, "Can you point
out the place where we stole the skiff?" . Well, I
didn't know which one he nieant. Siich a wilder-
ness of events had intervened since that day, more
than fifty years ago, it took me niore than five
minutes to call back that little incident, and then
I did call it back; it was a white skiff, and we
painted it red to allay suspicioti. And the sad-
dest, saddest man came aloog;— a stranger he was
—and he ldoked that red skiff over so pathetic-
ally, and he said; "Well, if it weren't for the com-

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plexion I'd know whose skiff that was." He said
it in that pleading way, you know, that appeals for
sympathy and suggestion; we were full of sym-
pathy for him, but we weren't in any condition to
offer suggestions. I can see him yet as he turned
away with that same sad look on his face and
vanished out of history forever. I wonder what
became of that man. I know what became of the
skiff. Well, it was a beautiful life, a lovely life.
There was no crime. Merely little things like
pillaging orchards and watermelon-patches and
breaking the Sabbath — we didn't break the Sab-
bath often enough to signify — once a week per-
haps. But we were good boys, good Presbyterian
boys, all Presbyterian boys, and loyal and all that;
anyway, we were good Presbyterian boys when
the weather was doubtful; when it was fair, we
did wander a little from the fold.

Look at John Hay and me. There we were in
obscurity, and look where we are now. Consider
the ladder which he has climbed, the illustrious
vocations he has served — and vocations is the
right word ; he has in all those vocations acquitted
himself with high credit and honor to his country
and to the mother that bore him. Scholar, sol-
dier, diplomat, poet, historian — now, see where
we afe. He is Secretary of State and I am a
gentleman. It could not happen in any other
country. Our institutions give men the positions
that of right belong to them through merit; all

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you men have won your places, not by heredities,
and not by family influence or extraneous help,
but only by the natural gifts God gave you at
your birth, made effective by your own energies;
this is the country to live in.

Now, there is one invisible guest here. A part
of me is present; the larger part, the better part,
is yonder at her home; that is my wife, and she
has a good many personal friends here, and I
think it won't distress any one of them to know
that, although she is going to be confined to that
bed for many months to come from that nervous
prostration, there is not any danger and she is
coming along very well — and I think it quite
appropriate that I should speak of her. I knew
her for the first time just in the same year that I
first knew John Hay and Tom Reed and Mr.
Twichell — thirty-six years ago — and she has been
the best friend I have ever had, and that is saying
a good deal ; she has reared me — she and Twichell
together — and what I am I owe to them. Twichell
— why, it is such a pleasure to look upon TwichelTs
face! For five-and-twenty years I was under the
Rev. Mr. Twichell's tuition, I was in his pastorate,
occupying a pew in his church, and held him in
due reverence. That man is full of all the graces
that go to make a person companionable and be-
loved; and wherever Twichell goes to start a
church the people flock there to buy the land;
they find real estate goes up all around the spot,

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and the envious and the thoughtful always try
to get Twichell to move to their neighborhood and
start a church ; and wherever you see him go you
can go and buy land there with confidence, feel-
ing sure that there will be a double price for you
before very long. I am not saying this to flatter
Mr. Twichell; it is the fact. Many and many a
time I have attended the annual sale in his
church, and bought up all the pews on a mar-
gin — and it would have been better for me spir-
itually and financially if I had stayed under his
wing.

I have tried to do good in this world, and it is
marvellous in how many different ways I have
done good, and it is comfortable to reflect — now,
there's Mr. Rogers — just out of the affection I
bear that man many a time I have given him
points in finance that he had never thought of—
and if he could lay aside envy, prejudice, and
superstition, and utilize those ideas in his busi-
ness, it would make a difference in his bank
account.

Well, I like the poetry. I like all the speeches
and the poetry, too. I liked Doctor Van Dyke's
poem. I wish I could return thanks in proper
measure to you, gentlemen, who have spoken and
violated your feelings to pay me compliments;
some were merited and some you overlooked,
it is true ; and Colonel Harvey did slander
every one of you, and put things into my
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mouth that I never said, never thought of
at all.

And now, my wife and I, out of our single heart,
return you our deepest and most grateful thanks,
and — yesterday was her birthday.

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TO THE WHITEFRIARS

Address at the Dinner Given by the White-
friars Club in Honor op Mr. Clemens,
London, June 20, 1899

The Whitefriars Club was founded by Dr. Samuel
Johnson, and Mr. Clemens was made an honorary
member in 1874. The members are representative of
literary and journalistic London. The toast of "Our
Guest " was proposed by Louis F. Austin, of the Illus-
trated London News, and in the course of some humor-
ous remarks he referred to the vow and to the imagi-
nary woes of the "Friars," as the members of the club
style themselves.

MR. CHAIRMAN AND BRETHREN OF THE
VOW — in whatever the vow is ; for although
I have been a member of this club for five-and-
twenty years, I don't know any more about what
that vow is than Mr. Austin seems to. But what-
ever the vow is, I don't care what it is. I have
made a thousand vows.

There is no pleasure comparable to making a
vow in the presence of one who appreciates that
vow, in the presence of men who honor and ap-

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preciate you for making the vow, and men who
admire you for making the vow.

There is only one pleasure higher than that, and
that is to get outside and break the vow. A vow
is always a pledge of some kind or other for the
protection of your own morals and principles or
somebody else's, and generally, by the irony of
fate, it is for the protection of your own morals.

Hence we have pledges that make us eschew
tobacco or wine, and while you are taking the
pledge there is a holy influence about that makes
you feel you are reformed, and that you can never
be so happy again in this world until — you get
outside and take a drink.

I had forgotten that I was a member of this
club — it is so long ago. But now I remember
that I was here five-and-twenty years ago, and
that I was then at a dinner of the Whitefriars
Club, and it was in those old days when you had
just made two great finds. All London was talk-
ing about nothing else than that they had found
Livingstone, and that the lost Sir Roger Tich-
borne had been found — and they were trying him
for it.

And at the dinner, Chairman (I do not

know who he was) — failed to come to time. The
gentleman who had been appointed to pay me
the customary compliments and to introduce me
forgot the compliments, and did not know what
they were.

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TO THE WHITEFRIARS

And George Augustus Sala came in at the last
moment, just when I was about to go without
compliments altogether. And that man was a
gifted man. They just called on him instantane-
ously, while he was going to sit down, to introduce
the stranger, and Sala made one of those mar-
vellous speeches which he was capable of making.
I think no man talked so fast as Sala did. One
did not need wine while he was making a speech.
The rapidity of his utterance made a man drunk
in a minute. An incomparable speech was that,
an impromptu speech, and an impromptu speech
is a seldom thing, and he did it so well.

He went into the whole history of the United
States, and made it entirely new to me. He
filled it with episodes and incidents that Wash-
ington never heard of, and he did it so convincing-
ly that although I knew none of it had happened,
from that day to this I do not know any history
but Sala's.

I do not know anything so sad as a dinner
where you are going to get up and say something
by-and-by, and you do not know what it is. You
sit and wonder and wonder what the gentleman
is going to say who is going to introduce you.
You know that if he says something severe, that
if he will deride you, or traduce you, or do any-
thing of that kind, he will furnish you with a
text, because anybody can get up and talk against
that.

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Anybody can get up and straighten out his
character. But when a gentleman gets up and
merely tells the truth about you, what can
you do?

Mr. Austin has done well. He has supplied so
many texts that I will have to drop out a lot of
them, and that is about as difficult as when you
do not have any text at all. Now, he made a
beautiful and smooth speech without any diffi-
culty at all, and I could have done that if I had
gone on with the schooling with which I began.
I see here a gentleman on my left who was my
master in the art of oratory more than twenty-
five years ago.

When I look upon the inspiring face of Mr.
Depew, it carries me a long way back. An old
and valued friend of mine is he, and I saw his
career as it came along, and it has reached pretty
well up to now, when he, by another miscarriage
of justice, is a United States Senator. But those
were delightful days when I was taking lessons
in oratory.

My other master — the Ambassador — is not here
yet. Under those two gentlemen I learned to
make after-dinner speeches, and it was charming.

You know the New England dinner is the great
occasion on the other side of the water. It is
held every year to celebrate the landing of the
Pilgrims. Those Pilgrims were a lot of people
who were not needed in England, and you know

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TO THE WHITEFRIARS

they had great rivalry, and they were persuaded
to go elsewhere, and they chartered a ship called
Mayflower and set sail, and I have heard it said
that they pumped the Atlantic Ocean through
that ship sixteen times.

They fell in over there with the Dutch from
Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and a lot of other places
with profane names, and it is from that gang that
Mr. Depew is descended.

On the other hand, Mr. Choate is descended
from those Puritans who landed on a bitter night
in December. Every year those people used to
meet at a great banquet in New York, and those
masters of mind in oratory had to make speeches.
It was Doctor Depew's business to get up there
and apologize for the Dutch, and Mr. Choate had
to get up later and explain the crimes of the
Puritans, and grand, beautiful times we used to
have.

It is curious that after that long lapse of time
I meet the Whitefriars again, some looking as
young and fresh as in the old days, others showing
a certain amount of wear and tear, and here, after
all this time, I find one of the masters of oratory
and the others named in the list.

And here we three meet again as exiles on one
pretext or another, and you will notice that while
we are absent there is a pleasing tranquillity in
America — a building up of public Confidence. We
are doing the best we can for our Country. I think

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we have spent our lives in serving our country,
and we never serve it to greater advantage than
when we get out of it.

But impromptu speaking — that is what I was
trying to learn. That is a difficult thing. I used
to do it in this way. I used to begin about a week
ahead, and write out my impromptu speech and
get it by heart. Then I brought it to the New
England dinner printed on a piece of paper in
my pocket, so that I could pass it to the reporters
all cut and dried, and in order to do an impromptu
speech as it should be done you have to indicate
the places for pauses and hesitations. I put them
all in it. And then you want the applause in the
right places.

When I got to the place where it should come
in, if it did not come in I did not care, but I had
it marked in the paper. And these masters of
mind used to wonder why it was my speech
came out in the morning in the first person,
while theirs went through the butchery of syn-
opsis.

I do that kind of speech (I mean an offhand
speech), and do it well, and make no mistake in
such a way to deceive the audience completely and
make that audience believe it is an impromptu
speech — that is art.

I was frightened out of it at last by an ex-
perience of Doctor Hayes. He was a sort of
Nansen of that 1 day. He had been to the North

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TO THE WHITEFRIARS

Pole, and it made him celebrated. He had even
seen the polar bear climb the pole.

He had made one of those magnificent voyages
such as Nansen made, and in those days when a
man did anything which greatly distinguished
him for the moment he had to come on to the
lecture platform and tell all about it.

Doctor Hayes was a great, magnificent creature
like Nansen, superblv built. He was to appear
in Boston. He wrote his lecture out, and it was
his purpose to read it from manuscript; but in an
evil hour he concluded that it would be a good
thing to preface it with something rather hand-
some, poetical, and beautiful that he could get off
by heart and deliver as if it were the thought of
the moment.

He had not had my experience, and could not
do that. He came on the platform, held his manu-
script down, and began with a beautiful piece of
oratory. He spoke something like this :

"When a lonely human being, a pigmy in the
midst of the architecture of nature, stands solitary
on those icy waters and looks abroad to the hori-
zon and sees mighty castles and temples of eternal
ice raising up their pinnacles tipped by the pencil
of the departing sun — "

Here a man came across the platform and
touched him on the shoulder, and said: "One
minute. ' ' And then to the audience :

"Is Mrs. John Smith in the house? Her hus-
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band has slipped on the ice and broken his
leg."

And you could see the Mrs. John Smiths get
up everywhere and drift out of the house, and it
made great gaps everywhere. Then Doctor Hayes
began again: "When a lonely man, a pigmy in
the architecture — " The janitor came in again
and shouted: "It is not Mrs. John Smith! It is
Mrs. John Jones !"

Then all the Mrs. Jones got up and left. Once
more the speaker started, and was in the midst
of the sentence when he was interrupted again,
and the result was that the lecture was not de-
livered. But the lecturer interviewed the janitor
afterward in a private room, and of the frag-
ments of the janitor they took "twelve baskets-
ful."

Now, I don't want to sit down just in this way.
I have been talking with so much levity that I
have said no serious thing, and you are really no
better or wiser, although Robert Buchanan has
suggested that I am a person who deals in wisdom.
I have said nothing which would make you better
than when you came here.

I should be sorry to sit down without having
said one serious word which you can carry home
and relate to your children and the old people
who are not able to get away.

And this is just a little maxim which has saved
me from many a difficulty and many a disaster,

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TO THE WHITEFRIARS

and in times of tribulation and uncertai
come to my rescue, as it shall to youiV
observe it as I do day and night.

I always use it in an emergency, and you can
take it home as a legacy from me, and it is:
"When in doubt, tell the truth."

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THE ASCOT GOLD CUP

The news of Mr. Clemens' s arrival in England in
June, 1907, was announced in the papers with big
headlines. Immediately following the announcement
was the news — also with big headlines — that the Ascot
Gold Cup had been stolen the same day. The combina-
tion, MARK TWAIN ARRIVES— ASCOT CUP
STOLEN, amused the public. The Lord Mayor of
London gave a banquet at the Mansion House in honor
of Mr. Clemens.

I DO assure you that I am not so dishonest as I
look. I have been so busy trying to rehabilitate
my honor about that Ascot Cup that I have had
no time to prepare a speech.

I was not so honest in former days as I am now,
but I have always been reasonably honest. Well,
you know how a man is influenced by his sur-
roundings. Once upon a time I went to a public
meeting where the oratory of a charitable worker
so worked on my feelings that, in common with
others, I would have dropped something sub-
stantial in the hat — if it had come round at that
moment.

The speaker had the power of putting those
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THE ASCOT GOLD CUP

vivid pictures before one. We were all affected.
That was the moment for the hat. I would have
put two hundred dollars in. Before he had fin-
ished I could have put in four hundred dollars.
I felt I could have filled up a blank check — with
somebody else's name — and dropped it in.

Well, now, another speaker got up, and in fif-
teen minutes damped my spirit; and during the
speech of the third speaker all my enthusiasm
went away. When at last the hat came round I
dropped in ten cents — and took out twenty-five.

I came over here to get the honorary degree
from Oxford, and I would have encompassed the
seven seas for an honor like that — the greatest
honor that has ever fallen to my share. I am
grateful to Oxford for conferring that honor upon
me, and I am sure my country appreciates it,
because first and foremost it is an honor to my
country.

And now I am going home again across the sea.
I am in spirit young but in the flesh old, so that
it is unlikely that when I go away I shall ever
see England again. But I shall go with the recol-
lection of the generous and kindly welcome I
have had.

I suppose I must say " Good-bye.' ' I say it
not with my lips only, but from the heart.

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THE SAVAGE CLUB DINNER

A portrait of Mr. Clemens, signed by all the members
of the club attending the dinner, was presented to him,
July 6, 1907, and in submitting the toast " The Health
of Mark Twain " Mr. J. Scott Stokes recalled the fact
that he had read parts of Doctor Clemens's works to
Harold Frederic during Frederic's last illness.

MR. CHAIRMAN AND FELLOW-SAVAGES,
— I am very glad indeed to have that portrait.
I think it is the best one that I have ever had, and
there have been opportunities before to get a good
photograph. I have sat to photographers twenty-
two times to-day. Those sittings added to those
that have preceded them since I have been in Eu-
rope — if we average at that rate — must have num-
bered one hundred to two hundred sittings. Out
of all those there ought to be some good photo-
graphs. This is the best I have had, and I am glad
to have your honored names on it. I did not know
Harold Frederic personally, but I have heard a
great deal about him, and nothing that was not
pleasant and nothing except such things as lead
a man to honor another man and to love him.
I consider that it is a misfortune of mine that I

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THE SAVAGE CLUB DINNER

have never had the luck to meet him, and if any
book of mine read to him in his last hours made
those hours easier for him and more comfortable,
I am very glad and proud of that. I call to mind
such a case many years ago of an English au-
thoress, well known in her day, who wrote such
beautiful child tales, touching and lovely in every
possible way. In a little biographical sketch of
her I found that her last hours were spent partly
in reading a book of mine, until she was no longer
able to read. That has always remained in my
mind, and I have always cherished it as one of
the good things of my life. I had read what she
had written, and had loved her for what she had
done.

Stanley apparently carried a book of mine
feloniously away to Africa, and I have not a
doubt that it had a noble and uplifting influence
there in the wilds of Africa — because on his pre-
vious journeys he never carried anything to read
except Shakespeare and the Bible. I did not
know of that circumstance. I did not know that
he had carried a book of mine. I only noticed
that when he came back he was a reformed man.
I knew Stanley very well in those old days.
Stanley was the first man who ever reported a
lecture of mine, and that was in St. Louis. When
I was down there the next time to give the same
lecture I was told to give them something fresh,
as they had read that in the papers. I met

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Stanley here when he came back from that first
expedition of his which closed with the finding of
Livingstone. You remember how he would break
out at the meetings of the British Association,
and find fault with what people said, because
Stanley had notions of his own, and could not con-
tain them. They had to come out or break him
up— and so he would go round and address geo-
graphical societies. He was always on the war-
path in those days, and people always had to have
Stanley contradicting their geography for them
and improving it. But he always came back and
sat drinking beer with me in the hotel up to two
in the morning, and he was then one of the most
civilized human beings that ever was.

I saw in a newspaper this evening a reference
to an interview which appeared in one of the
papers the other day, in which the interviewer
said that I characterized Mr. BirreH's speech the
other day at the Pilgrims' Club as ' ' bully. ' 9 Now,
if you will excuse me, I never use slang to an in-
terviewer or anybody else. That distresses me.
Whatever I said about Mr. Birrell's speech was
said in English, as good English as anybody uses.
If I could not describe Mr. BirrelTs delightful
speech without using slang I would not describe
it at all. I would close my mouth and keep it
closed, much as it would discomfort me.

Now that comes of interviewing a man in the
first person, which is an altogether wrong way to

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interview him. It is entirely wrong because none
of you, I, or anybody else, could interview a man
— could listen to a man talking any length of
time and then go off and reproduce that talk in
the first person. It can't be done. What results
is merely that the interviewer gives the sub-
stance of what is said and puts it in his own lan-
guage and puts it in your mouth. It will always
be either better language than you use or worse,
and in my case it is always worse. I have a
great respect for the English language. I am one
of its supporters, its promoters, its elevators. I
don't degrade it. A slip of the tongue would be
the most that you would get from me. I have
always tried hard and faithfully to improve my
English and never to degrade it. I always try to
use the best English to describe what I think and
what I feel, or what I don't feel and what I don't
think.

I am not one of those who in expressing opinions
confine themselves to facts. I don't know any-
thing that mars good literature so completely as
too much truth. Facts contain a deal of poetry,
but you can't use too many of them without
damaging your literature. I love all literature,
and as long as I am a doctor of literature — I have
suggested to you for twenty years I have been
diligently trying to improve my own literature,
and now, by virtue of the University of Oxford,
I mean to doctor everybody else's.

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Now I think I ought to apologize for my clothes.
At Jiome i venture things that I am not permitted
by my family to vejiture in fpreign parts. I was
instructed before I left home and ordered to re-
frain from white clothes in England. I meant
to keep that command fair and clean, and I would
have done it if I had been in the habit of obeying
instructions, but J can't invent a new process in
life right away. I have not had white clothes on
since I crossed the ocean until now.

In these three or four weeks I have grown so
tired of gr^y and black that you have earned my
gratitude in permitting me to come as I have. I
wear white clothes in the depth of winter m my
home, but I don't go out in the streets in them.
I don't go out to attract too much attentiQn. I
like to attract some, and always I would like $a be
dressed so th^t I may be more conspicuous than
anybody else.

If I had been an ancient Britxm, I would not
have contented myself with blue paint, but I
wpujd have bankrupted the rainbow. I so enjoy
gay clpthes in which women clothe themselves
that it always grieves me w]ien I go to the opera
to see tjxat, while women loQk like a flower-bed,
the men are a few gray sti#nps pmpng them in
their bl^cjc evening dress. These are two or three
re^spns why I wish to wear white clothes. Wheji I
fpid myself in assemblies like this, with everybody
in black clothes, I know I possess something that

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Is superior to everybody else's. Clothes are never
clean. You don't know whether they are clean or
not, because you can't see.

Here or anywhere you must scour your head
every two or three days or it is full of grit. Your
clothes must collect jufct as much dirt as your
hair. If you wear white clothes you are clean,
and your cleaning bill gets so heavy that you
have to take care. I am proud to say that I cari
wear a white suit of clothes without a blemish for
three days. If you need any further instruc-
tion in the matter of clothes I shall be glad to
give it to you. I hope I have convinced some of
you that it is just as well to wear white clothes
as any other kind. I do not want to boast. I
only want to make you understand that you are
not clean.

As to age, the fact that I am nearly seventy-
two years old does not clearly indicate how old I
am, because part of every day — it is with me as
with you — you try to describe your age, and you
cannot do it. Sometimes you are only fifteen;
sometimes you are twenty-five. It is very seldom
in a day that I am seventy-two years old. I atii
older now sometimes than I was when I used to
rob orchards; a thing which I would not do to-
day — if the orchards were watched. I am sd
glad to be here to-night. I am so glad to teneW
with the Savages that nbw ancient time Wheti I
first sat with a company of this club in Londori

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in 1872. That is a long time ago. But I did
stay with the Savages a night in London long
ago, and as I had come into a very strange land,
and was with friends, as I could see, that has al-
ways remained in my mind as a peculiarly blessed
evening, since it brought me into contact with
men of my own kind and my own feelings.

I am glad to be here, and to see you all again,
because it is very likely that I shall not see you
again. It is easier than I thought to come across
the Atlantic. I have been received, as you know,
in the most delightfully generous way in England
ever since I came here. It keeps me choked up
all the time. Everybody is so generous, and they
do seem to give you such a hearty welcome. No-
body in the world can appreciate it higher than I
do. It did not wait till I got to London, but
when I came ashore at Tilbury the stevedores on
the dock raised the first welcome — a good and
hearty welcome from the men who do the heavy
labor in the world, and save you and me having
to do it. They are the men who with their hands
build empires and make them prosper. It is
because of them that the others are wealthy and
can live in luxury. They received me with a
1 'Hurrah !" that went to my heart. They are the
men that build civilization, and without them no
civilization can be built. So I came first to the au-
thors and creators of civilization, and I blessedly end
this happy meeting with the Savages who destroy it.

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GENERAL MILES AND THE DOG

Mr. Clemens was the guest of honor at a dinner
given by the Pleiades Club at the Hotel Brevoort,
December 22, 1907. The toastmaster introduced the
guest of the evening with a high tribute to his place
in American literature, saying that he was dear to the
hearts of all Americans.

IT is hard work to make a speech when you have
listened to compliments from the powers in
authority. A compliment is a hard text to preach
to. When the chairman introduces me as a
person of merit, and when he says pleasant things
about me, I always feel like answering simply that
what he says is true; that it is all right; that, as
far as I am concerned, the things he said can stand
as they are. But you always have to say some-
thing, and that is what frightens me.

I remember out in Sydney once having to re-
spond to some complimentary toast, and my one
desire was to turn in my tracks like any other
worm — and run for it. I was remembering that
occasion at a later date when I had to introduce
a speaker. Hoping, then, to spur his speech by
putting him, in joke, on the defensive, I accused

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him in my introduction of everything I thought
it impossible for him to have committed. When
I finished there was an awful calm. I had been
telling his life history by mistake.

(One must keep up one's character. Earn a
character first if you can, and if you can't, then
assume one. From the code of morals I have
been following and revising and revising for
^ seventy-two years I remember one detail. All my
vj life I have been honest — comparatively honest.
I could never use money I had not made honestly
— I could only lend it.

Last spring I met General Miles again, and he
commented on the fact that we had known each
other thirty years. He said it was strange that
we had not met years before, when we had bbth
been in Washington. At that point I changed
the subject, and I changed it with art. But the
facts are these:

I was then tinder contract for my Innocents
Abroad, but did not have a cent to live on while
I wrote it. So I went to Washington to do a little
journalism. There I met an equally poor friend,
William Davidson, who had not a single vice,
unless you call it a vice in a Scot to love Scotch.
Together we devised the first and original news-
paper syndicate, selling two letters a week to
twelve newspapers and getting $i a letter. That
$24 a week would have been enough for us — if we
had not had to support the jug.

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But there was a day when we felt that we must
haVe $* right away — $3 at once. That was how I
met the General. It doesn't matter now what
we wanted so much motiey at one time for, but
that Scot and I did occasionally want it. The
Scot sent me out one day to get it. He had a great
belief in Providence, that Scottish friend of mine.
He said: "The Lord will provide/*

I had given up trying to find the money lying
about, and was in a hotel lobby in despair, when
I saw a beautiful unfriended dog. The dog saw
me, too, and at once we became acquainted.
Then General Miles came in, admired the dog,
and asked me to price it. I priced it at $3. He
offered me an opportunity to reconsider the value
of the beautiful animal, but I refused to take
more than Providence knew I needed. The Gen-
eral carried the dog to his room.

Then came in a sweet little middle-aged man,
who at once began looking around the lobby.

"Did you lose a dog?" I asked. He said he
had.

"I think I could find it," I volunteered, "-for
a small sum."

" 'How much V " he asked. And I told him $3.

He urged me to accept more, but I did not wish
to outdo Providence. Then I went to the Gen-
eral's room and asked for the dog back. He was
very angry, and wanted to know why I had sold
him a dog that did not belong to me.

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"That's a singular question to ask me, sir," I
replied. "Didn't you ask me to sell him? You
started it." And he let me have him. I gave
him back his $3 and returned the dog, collect, to
its owner. That second $3 I carried home to the
Scot, and we enjoyed it, but the first $3, the money
I got from the General, I would have had to lend.

The General seemed not to remember my part
in that adventure, and I never had the heart to
tell him about it.

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WHEN IN DOUBT, TELL THE TRUTH

Mark Twain's speech at the dinner of the " Freund-
schaft Society," March g, 1906, had as a basis the
words of introduction used by Toastmaster Frank,
who, referring to Pudd'nhead Wilson, used the phrase,
"When in doubt, tell the truth."

MR. CHAIRMAN, MR. PUTZEL, AND GEN-
L TLEMEN OF THE FREUNDSCHAFT,—
That maxim I did invent, but never expected it
to be applied to me. I did say, "When you are
in doubt,' ' but when I am in doubt myself I use
more sagacity.

Mr. Grciut suggested that if I, have anything to
say against Mr. Putzel, or any criticism of his
career or his character, I am the last person to
come out on account of that maxim and tell the
truth. That is altogether a mistake.

I do think it is right for other people to be virtu-
ous so that they can be happy hereafter, but if I
knew every impropriety that even Mr. Putzel
has committed in his life, I would not mention
one of them. My judgment has been maturing
for seventy years, and I have got to that point
where I know better than that.

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Mr. Putzel stands related to me in a very tender
way (through the tax office), and it does not
behoove me to say anything which could by any
possibility militate against that condition of things.

Now, that word — taxes, taxes, taxes! I have
heard it to-night. I have heard it all night. I
wish somebody would change that subject r that
is a very sore subject to me.

I was so relieved when Judge Leventritt did
find something that was not taxable— when he
said that the commissioner could not tax your
patience. And that comforted me. We've got
so mucli taxation. I don't kiioW of d single
foreign product that enters this country uhtdxfed
except the answer to prayer.

On an occasion like this the proprieties requite
that you merely pay compliments tb the guest
of the occasion, and I am merely tiete tb paly
compliments to the guest of the occasion, not to
criticise him in any way, and I ban say only fcoin-
plimentary things to him.

When I went down to the t&x office sotafe time
ago, for the first time in New Yoi*k, t saw Mi\
Putzel sitting in the "Seat of Pet-jury." I
recognized him right away. I warmed to him cm
the spot. I didn't know that I had ever seen hilti
before, but just as soon as I saw him I ffecognized
him. I had met him twenty-five y£ars beforfc,
and at that time had achieved a knowledge of his
abilities and something iiiore than that.

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I thought: "Now, this is the man whom I
saw twenty-five years ago." On that occasion I
not only went free at his hands, but carried off
k something more than that. I hoped it would
/happen again.
y ^ It was twenty-five years ago when I saw IB
/ r young clerk in Putnam's book-store. I went in
V there and asked for George Haven Putnam, and
handed him my card, and then the young man
said Mr. Putnam was busy and I couldn't see him.
Well, I had merely called in a social way, and so
fl it didn't matter.

\ I was going out when I saw a great big, fat,

interesting-looking book lying there, and I took
it up. It was aq. account of the invasion of Eng-
land in the fourteenth century by the Preaching
Friar, and it interested me.

I asked him the price of it, and he said four
dollars.

"Well," I said, "what discount do you allow to
publishers?"

He said: "Forty per cent, off."
I said: "All right, I am a publisher."
He put down the figure, forty per cent, off, on a
card.

Then I said: "What discount do you allow to
authors?"
He said : ' ' Forty per cent. off. ' '
"Well," I said, "set me down as an au-

thor.

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"Now," said I, "what discount do you allow
to the clergy?"

He said: "Forty per cent, off."

I said to him that I was only on the road, and

^^mt I was studying for the ministry. I asked

fl |Ri wouldn't he knock off twenty per cent, for

That. He set down the figure, and he never

smiled once.

I was working off these humorous brilliancies
on him arid getting no return — not a scintillation
in his eye, not a spark of recognition of what I
was doing there. I was almost in despair.

I thought I might try him once more, so I said:
"Now, I am also a member of the human race.
Will you let me have the ten per cent, off for
that ?" He set it down, and never smiled.

Well, I gave it up. I said: "There is my card
with my address on it, but I have not any money
with me. Will you please send the bill to Hart-
ford ?" I took up the book and was going away.

He said : ' ' Wait a minute. There is forty cents
coming to you."

When I met him in the tax office I thought
maybe I could make something again, but I
could not. But I had not any idea I could when
I came, and as it turned out I did get off entirely
free.

I put up my hand and made a statement. It
gave me a good deal of pain to do that. I was
not used to it. I was born and reared in. the

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higher circles of Missouri, and there we don't do
such things — didn't in my time, but we have got
that little matter settled — got a sort of tax levied
on me. '

Then he touched me. Yes, he touched me tj;
time, because he cried — cried! He was move
teiars to see that I, a virtuous person only a year"
before, after immersion for one year — during one
year in the New York morals — had no more con-
science than a millionaire.

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THE DAY WE CELEBRATE

Address at the Fourth-op-July Dinner op the
American Society, London, 1899

I NOTICED in Ambassador Choate's speech that
he said : "You may be Americans or Englishmen,
but you cannot be both at the same time." You
responded by applause.

Consider the effect of a short residence here. I
find the Ambassador rises first to speak to a toast,
followed by a Senator, and I come third. What a
subtle tribute that to monarchial influence of the
country when you place rank above respecta-
bility!

I was born modest, and if I had not been things
like this would force it upon me. I understand it
quite well. I am here to see that between them
they do justice to the day we celebrate, and in
case they do not I must do it myself. But I notice
they have considered this day merely from one
side — its sentimental, patriotic, poetic side. But
it has another side. It has a commercial, a busi-
ness side that needs reforming. It has a historical
side.

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THE DAY WE CELEBRATE

I do not say "an" historical side, because I am
speaking the American language. I do not see
why our cousins should continue to say "an" hos-
pital, "an" historical fact, "an" horse. It seems
to me the Congress of Women, now in session,
should look to it. I think "an" is having a little
too much to do with it. It comes of habit, which
accounts for many things.

Yesterday, for example, I was at a luncheon
party. At the end of the party a great dignitary
of the English Established Church went away half
an hour before anybody else and carried off my
hat. Now, that was an innocent act on his part.
He went out first, and of course had the choice of
hats. As a rule I try to get out first myself. But
I hbld that it was an innocent, unconscious act,
due, perhaps, to heredity. He was thinking p,bout
ecclesiastical matters, and when a man is in that
condition 6f mind he will take anybody's hat.
The result was that the whole afternoon I was
under the influence of his clerical hat and eouJ4 not
tell a lie. Of course, he was hard at it.

It is a compliment to both of us. His hat fitted
me exactly; my hat fitted him exactly. So I
judge I was born to rise to high dignity in the
Church some how or other, but I do not know
what he was born for. That is an illustration of
the influence of habit, and it is perceptible here
when they say "an" hospital, "an" European,
"an" historical.

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The business aspects of the Fourth of July is not
perfect as it stands. See what it costs us every
\ year with loss of life, the crippling of thousands
with its fireworks, and the burning down of prop-
erty. It is not only sacred to patriotism and
universal freedom, but to the surgeon, the under-
taker, the insurance offices — and they are working
it for all it is worth.

I am pleased to see that we have a cessation of
war for the time. This coming from me, a soldier,
you will appreciate. I was a soldier in the South-
ern war for two weeks, and when gentlemen get
up to speak of the great deeds our army and navy
have recently done, why, it goes all through me
and fires up the old war spirit. I had in my first
engagement three horses shot under me. The
next ones went over my head, the next hit me in
the back. Then I retired to meet an engagement.

I thank you, gentlemen, for making even a
slight reference to the war profession, in which I
distinguished myself, short as my career was.

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INDEPENDENCE DAY

The American Society in London gave a banquet,
July 4, 1907, at the Hotel Cecil. Ambassador Choate
called on Mr. Clemens to respond to the toast "The
Day We Celebrate. 19

MR. CHAIRMAN, MY LORD, AND GEN-
TLEMEN, — Once more it happens, as it
has happened so often since I arrived in England
a week or two ago, that instead of celebrating
the Fourth of July properly as has been indicated,
I have to first take care of my personal character.
Sir Mortimer Durand still remains unconvinced.
Well, I tried to convince these people from the
beginning that I did not take the Ascot Cup;
and as I have failed to convince anybody that I
did not take the cup, I might as well confess I
did take it and be done with it. I don't see why
this uncharitable feeling should follow me every-
where, and why I should have that crime thrown
up to me on all occasions. The tears that I have
wept over it ought to have created a different
feeling than this — and, besides, I don't think it is
very right or fair that, considering England has
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been trying to take a cup of ours for forty years —
I don't see why they should take so much trouble
when I tried to go into the business myself.

Sir Mortimer Durand, too, has had trouble
from going to a dinner here, and he has told you
what he suffered in consequence. But what did
he suffer? He only missed his train and one
night of discomfort, and he remembers it to this
day. Oh! if you could only think what I have
suffered from a similar circumstance. Two or
three years ago, in New York, with that Society
there which is made up of people from all British
Colonies, and from Great Britain generally, whp
were educated in British colleges and British
schools, I was there to respond to a toast of some
kind or other, and I did then what I have been in
the habit of doing, from a selfish motive, for a
long time, and that is, I got myself placed No. 3
in the list of speakers — then you get home early.

I had to go five miles up-river, and had to catch
a particular train or not get there. But see the
magnanimity which is born in me, which I have
cultivated all my life. A very famous and very
great British clergyman came to me presently,
and he said: "I am away down in the list; I have
got to catch a certain train this Saturday night;
if I don't catch that train I shall be carried be-
yond midnight and break the Sabbath. Won't
you change places with me?" I said: "Certainly
I will." I did it at once. Now, see what happened.

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Talk about Sir Mortimer Dtirand's sufferings for
a single night ! I have suffered ever since because
I saved that gentlenian from breaking the Sab-
bath — yes, saved him. I took his place, but I
lost my train, and it was I who broke the Sabbath.
Up to that time I never had broken the Sabbath
in my life, and from that day to this I never have
kept it.

OH! I am learning much here to-night. I find
I didn't know anything about the American
Society — that is, I didn't know its chief virtue. I
didn't know its chief virtue until his Excellency
our Ambassador revealed it — I may say, exposed
it. I wis intending to go home bn the 13th of this
month, but I look upon that in a different light
now; I am going to stay here until the American
Society pays my passage.

Our Ambassador has spokeh of our Fourth of
July and the noise it makes. We have got a
double Fourth of July — a daylight Fourth and a
midnight Fourth. DUring the day in America;
as our Ambassador has indicated, we keep the
Fourth of July ptoperly in a reverent spirit. We
devote it to teaching our children patriotic things
— reverence for the Declaration of Independence.
We honor the day all through the daylight hours*
and when night comes we dishonor it. Pres-
ently — before long — they are getting riedrly
ready to begin now — on the Atlantic coast, when
night shuts dowh, that JDandemonium will begin^

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and there will be noise, and noise, and noise — all
night long — and there will be more than noise —
there will be people crippled, there will be people
killed, there will be people who will lose their eyes,
and all through that permission which we give
to irresponsible boys to play with firearms and
fire-crackers, and all sorts of dangerous things.
We turn that Fourth of July, alas ! over to rowdies
to drink and get drunk and make the night hide-
ous, and we cripple and kill more people than you
would imagine.

We probably began to celebrate our Fourth-of-
July night in that way one hundred and twenty-
five years ago, and on every Fourth-of-July night
since these horrors have grown and grown, until
now, in our five thousand towns of America,
somebody gets killed or crippled on every Fourth-
of-July night, besides those cases of sick persons
whom we never hear of, who die as the result of
the noise or the shock. They cripple and kill
more people on the Fourth of July in America
than they kill and cripple in our wars nowadays,
and there are no pensions for these folk. And,
too, we burn houses. Really we destroy more
property on every Fourth-of-July night than the
whole of the United States was worth one hundred
and twenty-five years ago. Really our Fourth
of July is our day of mourning, our day of sorrow.
Fifty thousand people who have lost friends,
or who have had friends crippled, receive that

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Fourth of July, when it comes, as a day of mourn-
ing for the losses they have sustained in their
families.

I have suffered in that way myself. I have had
relatives killed in that way. One was in Chicago
years ago — an uncle of mine, just as good an
uncle as I have ever had, and I had lots of them —
yes, uncles to burn, uncles to spare. This poor
uncle, full of patriotism, opened his mouth to
hurrah, and a rocket went down his throat. Be-
fore that man could ask for a drink of water to
quench that thing, it blew up and scattered him
all over the forty-five States, and — really, now,
this is true — I know about it myself — twenty-four
hours after that it was raining buttons, recogniz-
able as his, on the Atlantic seaboard. A person
cannot have a disaster like that and be entirely
cheerful the rest of his life. I had another uncle,
on an entirely different Fourth of July, who was
blown up that way, and really it trimmed him as
it would a tree. He had hardly a limb left on hinT)
anywhere. All we have left now is an expurgated |
edition of that uncle. But never mind aboutj
these things; they are merely passing matters.
Don't let me make you sad.

Sir Mortimer Durand said that you, the English
people, gave up your colonies over there — got
tired of them — and did it with reluctance. Now
I wish you just to consider that he was right
about that, and that he had his reasons for saying

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that England did not look upon our Revolution
as a foreign war, but as a civil war fought by
Englishmen.

Our Fourth of July which we honor so much,
and which we love so much, and which we take
so much pride in, is an English institution, not
an American one, arid it comes of a great ancestry.
The first Fourth of July in that noble genealogy
dates back s6vfen centuries lacking eight years.
That is the day of the Great Charter — the Magna
Charta— which was born at Runnymede in the
next to the last year of King John, and portions
of the liberties secured thus by those hardy Barons
from that reluctant King John are a part of our
Declaration of Independence, of our Fourth of
July, of our American liberties. And the second
of those Fourths of July was not born until four
centimes later, in Charles the First's time, in the
Bill of Rights, and that is ours, that is part
of our liberties. The next one was still English,
in New England, where they established that
principle which. remains with us to this day, and
will continue to remain with us — no taxation
without representation. That is always going to
stand, and that the English Colonies in New
England gave us.

The Fourth of July, and the one which you are
celebrating now, born in Philadelphia on; the
4th of July, 1776 — that is English, tpo. It is not
American. Those were Eriglish colonists, sub-

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INDEPENDENCE DAY

jects of King George III., Englishmen at heart,
who protested against the oppressions of the
Home Government. Though they proposed to
cure those oppressions and remove them, still
remaining under the Crown, they were not in-
tending a revolution. The revolution was brought
about by circumstances which they could not
control. The Declaration of Independence was
written by a British subject, every name signed
to it was the name of a British subject.
There was not the name of a single American
attached to the Declaration of Independence —
in fact, there was not an American in the country
In that day except the Indians out on the plains.
They were Englishmen, all Englishmen — Ameri-
cans did not begin until seven years later, when
that Fourth of July had become seven years old,
and then the American Republic was established.
Since then there have been Americans. So you
see what we owe to England in the matter of
liberties.

We have, however, one Fourth of July which is
absolutely our own, and that is that great proc-
lamation issued forty years ago by that great
American to whom Sir Mortimer Durand paid
that just and beautiful tribute — Abraham Lincoln.
Lincoln's proclamation, which not only set the
black slaves free, but set the white man free also.
The owner was set free from the burden and
offence, that sad condition of things where he

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was in so many instances a master and owner of
slaves when he did not want to be. That proc-
lamation set them all free. But even in this
matter England suggested it, for England had set
her slaves free thirty years before, and we followed
her example. We always followed her example,
whether it was good or bad.

And it was an English judge that issued that
other great proclamation, and established that
great principle that, when a slave, let him belong
to whom he may, and let him come whence he
may, sets his foot upon English soil, his fetters
by that act fall away and he is a free man before
the world. We followed the example of 1833, and
we freed our slaves as I have said.

It is true, then, that all our Fourths of July,
and we have five of them, England gave to us,
except that one that I have mentioned — the
Emancipation Proclamation, and, lest we forget,
let us all remember that we owe these things to
England. Let us be able to say to Old England,
this great-hearted, venerable old mother of the
race, you gave us our Fourths of July that we love
and that we honor and revere, you gave us the
Declaration of Independence, which is the Charter
of our rights, you, the venerable Mother of Liber-
ties, the Protector of Anglo-Saxon Freedom — you
gave us these things, and we do most honestly
thank you for them.

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AMERICANS AND THE ENGLISH

Address at a Gathering op Americans in
London, July 4, 1872

KlfR. CHAIRMAN AND LADIES AND GEN-
I VI TLEMEN — I thank you for the compliment
which has just been tendered me, and to show
my appreciation of it I will not afflict you with
many words. It is pleasant to celebrate in this
peaceful way, upon this old mother soil, the
anniversary of an experiment which was born of
war with this same land so long ago, and wrought
out to a successful issue by the devotion of our
ancestors. It has taken nearly a hundred years
to bring the English and Americans into kindly
and mutually appreciative relations, but I be-
lieve it has been accomplished at last. It was a
great step when the two last misunderstandings
were settled by arbitration instead of cannon.
It is another great step when England adopts
our sewing-machines without claiming the in-
yenticm — as usual. It was another when they
iihported one of our sleeping-cars the other day.
And it warmed my heart more than I can tell,

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yesterday, when I witnessed the spectacle of an
Englishman ordering an American sherry cobbler
of his own free will and accord — and not only
that but with a great brain and a level head re-
minding the barkeeper not to forget the straw-
berries. With a common origin, a common lan-
guage, a common literature, a common religion,
and — common drinks, what is longer needful to
the cementing of the two nations together in a
permanent bond of brotherhood?
V This is an age of progress, and oiirs is a progres-
sive land. A great and glorious land, too — a land
which has developed a Washington, a Franklin, a
Wm. M. Tweed, a Longfellow, a Motley, a Jay
Gould, a Samuel C. Pomeroy, a recent Congress
which has never had its equal (in some respiects),
and a United States Army which conquered sixty
Indians in eight months by tiring them out — which
is much better than uncivilized slaughter, God
knows. We have a criminal jury System which
is superior to any in the world ; and its efficiency
is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve
men every day who don't know anything and
can't read. And I may observe that we have an
insanity plea that would have savfed Cain. I
think I can say, and say with pride, thkt we have
some legislatures that bring higher prices than
any in the world.

.1 refer with effusion td our railway system,
which consents to let us live, thoiigh it might do

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the opposite, being our owners. It only destroyed
three thousand and seventy lives last year by
collisions, and twenty-seven thousand two hun-
dred and sixty by running over heedless and un-
necessary people at crossings. The companies
seriously regretted the killing of these thirty
thousand people, and went so far as to pay for
some of them — voluntarily, of course, for the
meanest of us would not claim that we possess
a court treacherous enough to enforce a law
against a railway company. But, thank Heaven,
the railway companies are generally disposed to do
the right and kindly thing without compulsion. I
know of an instance which greatly touched me at
the time. After an accident the company sent
home the remains of a dear distant old relative of
mine in a basket, with the remark, "Please state
what figure you hold him at — and return the
basket/' Now there couldn't be anything friend-
lier than that.

But I must not stand here and brag all night.
However, you won't mind a body bragging a
little about his country on the Fourth of July. It
is a fair and legitimate time to fly the eagle. I
will say only one more word of brag — and a hope-
ful one. It is this. We have a form of govern-
ment which gives each man a fair chance and no
favor. With us no individual is born with a right
to look down upon his neighbor and hold him in
contempt. Let such of us as are not dukes find

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our consolation in that. And we may find hope
for the future in the fact that as unhappy as is
the condition of our political morality to-day,
England has risen up out of a far fouler since the
days when Charles I. ennobled courtesans and all
political place was a matter of bargain and sale.
There is hope for us yet.*

* At least the above is the speech which I was going to
make, but our minister, General Schenck, presided, and after
the blessing, got up and made a great, long, inconceivably dull
harangue, and wound up by saying that inasmuch as speech-
making did not seem to exhilarate the guests much, all
further oratory would be dispensed with during the evening,
and we could just sit and talk privately to our elbow-neighbors
and have a good, sociable time. It is known that in conse-
quence of that remark forty-four perfected speeches died in
the womb. The depression, the gloom, the solemnity that
reigned over the banquet from that time forth will be a last-
ing memory with many that were there. By that one thought-
less remark General Schenck lost forty-four of the best
friends he had in England. More than one said that night:
"And this is the sort of person that is sent to represent us
in a great sister empire!"

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ABOUT LONDON

Address at a Dinner Given by the Savage Club,
London, September 28, 1872.

Reported by Moncure D. Conway in the Cincinnati
Commercial.

IT affords me sincere pleasure to meet this dis-
tinguished club, a club which has extended its
hospitalities and its cordial welcome to so many
of my countrymen. I hope [and here the speak-
er's voice became low and fluttering] you will
excuse these clothes. I am going to the theatre;
that will explain these clothes. I have other
clothes than these. Judging human nature by
what I have seen of it, I suppose that the custom-
ary thing for a stranger to do when he stands here
is to make a pun on the name of this club, under
the impression, of course, that he is the first man
that that idea has occurred to. It is a credit to
our human nature, not a blemish upon it; for it
shows that underlying all our depravity (and
God knows and you know we are depraved
enough) and all our sophistication, and untarnish-
ed by them, there is a sweet germ of innocence

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and simplicity still. When a stranger says to
me, with a glow of inspiration in his eye, some
gentle, innocuous little thing about " Twain and
one flesh," and all that sort of thing, I don't try
to crush that man into the earth — no. I feel like
saying: "Let me take you "by the hand, sir; let
me embrace you; I have not heard that pun for
weeks." We will deal in palpable puns. We will
call parties named King "Your Majesty," and
we will say to the Smiths that we think we have
heard that name before somewhere. Such is .hu-
man nature. We cannot alter this. It is God /
that made us so for some good and wise purpose.
Let us not repine. But though I riiay seem
strange, may seem eccentric, I mean to refrain
from punning upon ihe name of this club, though
I could make a very good one if / had time to
think about it — a week.

I cannot express to you what entire enjoyment
I find in this first visit to this prodigious me-
tropolis of yours. Its wonders seem to me to be
limitless. I go about as in a dream — as in a realm
of enchantment— where many things are rare and
beautiful, and all things are strange and marvel-
lous. Hour after hour I stand — I stand spell-
bound, ids it were — and gaze upon the statuary
in Leicester, Square. [Leicester Square being a
liorrible chaos, with the relic of an equestHan
statue ih the centre, the king being headless and
limbless, and the horse in little better coridition.]

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ABOUT LONPPN

I visit the mortuary effigies of noble old Henry
VIII., and Judge Jeffreys, and the preserved go-
rilla, and try to make up my mind which of my
ancestors I admire the most: I go to that match-
less Hyde Park r and drive all around it, and then
I start tp enter it at the Marble Arch — and — am
induced to "change my mind." [Cabs are not per-
mitted in Hyde Park — nothing lpss aristocratic
than a private carriage.] It is a great benefac-
tion—is Hyde Park. There, in his hansom cab,
the invalid can go — the poof, sad child of mis-
fortune — and insert his nose between the railings,
and breathe the pure, health -giving air of the
country and of heaven. And if he is a swell in-
valid, who isn't obliged to depend upon parks for
his country air, he can drive inside — if he owns
his vehicle. I drive round and round Hyde Park,
knd the more I see of the edges of it the more
grateful I am that the margin is extensive.

And I have been to the Zoological Gardens.
What a wonderul place that is! I never have
seen such a curious and interesting variety of wild
animals in any garden before— except "Mabille."
I never believed before there were so many dif-
ferent kinds of animals in the world as you can
find there — and I don't believe it yet. I have
been to the British Museum. I would advise
you to drop in there some time when you have
nothing to do for— five ipinutes — if you have
never been there. It seems to me the noblest

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monument that this nation has yet erected to her
greatness. I say to her, our greatness — as a na-
tion. True, she has built other monuments, and
stately ones, as well; but these she has uplifted
in honor of two or three colossal demigods who
have stalked across the world's stage, destroying
tyrants and delivering nations, and whose prodi-
gies will still live in the memories of men ages
after their monuments shall have crumbled to
dust — I refer to the Wellington and Nelson monu-
ments, and — the Albert memorial. [Sarcasm. The
Albert memorial is the finest monument 'in the
world, and celebrates the existence of as com-
monplace a person as good luck ever lifted out
of obscurity.]

The library at the British Museum I find par-
ticularly astounding. I have read there hours
together, and hardly made an impression on it. I
revere that library. It is the author's friend. I
don't care how mean a book is, it always takes
one copy. [A copy of every book printed in Great
Britain must by law be sent to the British Mu-
seum, a law much complained of by publishers.]
And then every day that author goes there to
gaze at that book, and is encouraged to go on in
the good work. And what a touching sight it is
of a Saturday afternoon to see the poor, care-
worn clergymen gathered together in that vast i
reading-room cabbaging sermons for Sunday.^
You will pardon my referring to these things.

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ABOUT LONDON

Everything in this monster city interests me, and
I cannot keep from talking, even at the risk of
being instructive. People here seem always to
express distances by parables. To a stranger it
is just a little confusing to be so parabolic — so
to speak. I collar a citizen, and I think I am
going to get some valuable information out of
him. I ask him how far it is to Birmingham,
and he says it is twenty-one shillings and six-
pence. Now we know that doesn't help a man
who is trying to learn. I find myself down-town
somewhere, and I want to get some sort of idea
where I am — being usually lost when alone — and
I stop a citizen and say: "How far is it to Charing
Cross ?" "Shilling fare in a cab," and off he goes.
I suppose if I were to ask a Londoner how far it
is from the sublime to the ridiculous, he would
try to express it in coin. But I am trespassing
upon your time with these geological statistics
and historical reflections. I will not longer keep
you from your orgies. 'Tis a real pleasure for me
to be here, and I thank you for it. The name of
the Savage Club is associated in my mind with the
kindly interest and the friendly offices which you
lavished upon an old friend of mine who came
among you a stranger, and you opened your
English hearts to him and gave him welcome and
a home — Artemus Ward. Asking that you will
join me, I give you his memory.

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PRINCETON

Mr. Clemens spent several days in May, 1901, in
Princeton, New Jersey, as the guest of Lawrence
Hutton. He gave a reading one evening before a large
audience composed of university students and pro*
fessors. Before the reading Mr. Clemens said:

I FEEL exceedingly surreptitious in coming
down here without ai announcement of any
kind. I do not want to see any advertisements
around, for the reason that I'm not a lecturer
any longer. I reformed long ago, and I break
over and commit this sin only just one time this
year— and that is moderate, I think, for a person
of my disposition. It is not my purpose to lect-
ure any more as long as I live. I never intend to
stand up on a platform any more — unless by the
request of a sheriff or something like that.

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THE ST. LOUIS HARBOR- BOAT
"MARK TWAIN"

The Countess de Rochatnbeau christened the St Louis
harbor-boat Mark Twain in honor of Mr. Clemens,
June 6, 1 902. Just before the luncheon he acted as pilot.

" Lower away leadt" boomed out the voice of the pilot.

"Mark twain, quarter five and one-half — six feetT
replied the leadsman below.

" You are all dead safe as long as I have the wheel —
but this is my last time at the wheel.' 9

At the luncheon Mr. Clemens made a short address.

FIRST of all, no — second of all — I wish to offer
my thanks for the honor done me by naming
this last rose of summer of the Mississippi Valley
for me, this boat which represents a perished in-
terest, which I fortified long ago, but did not save
its life. And, in the first place, I wish to thank
the Countess de Rochambeau for the honor she
has done me in presiding at this christening.

I believe that it is peculiarly appropriate that
I should be allowed the privilege of joining my
voice with the general voice of St. Louis and Mis-
souri in welcoming to the Mississippi Valley and

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this part of the continent these illustrious visitors
from France.

When La Salle came down this river a century
and a quarter ago there was nothing on its banks
but savages. He opened up this great river, and
by his simple act was gathered in this great Lou-
isiana territory. I would have done it myself for
half the money.

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SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY

Address at a Dinner Given by Colonel George
Harvey at Delmonico's, December 5, 1905,
to Celebrate the Seventieth Anniver-
sary op Mr. Clemens' Birth

Mr. Howells introduced Mr. Clemens:

"Now, ladies and gentlemen, and Colonel Harvey, I
will try not to be greedy on your behalf in wishing the
health of our honored and, in view of his great age,
our revered guest; I will not say, 'Oh King, live
forever!' but 'Oh King, live as long as you like!'"
[Amid great applause and waving of napkins all rise
and drink to Mark Twain.]

WELL, if I made that joke, it is the best one
I ever made, and it is in the prettiest lan-
guage, too. I never can get quite to that height.
But I appreciate that joke, and I shall remember
it — and I shall use it when occasion requires.

I have had a great many birthdays in my time.
I remember the first one very well, and I always
think of it with indignation; everything was so
crude, unaesthetic, primeval. Nothing like this at
all. No proper appreciative preparation made;
nothing really ready. Now, for a person born with

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high and delicate instincts — why, even the cra-
dle wasn't whitewashed — nothing ready at all. I
hadn't any hair, I hadn't any teeth, I hadn't any
clothes, I had to go to my first banquet just like
that. Well, everybody came swarming in. It
was the merest little bit of a village — hardly that,
just a little hamlet, in the backwoods of Missouri,
where nothing ever happened, and the people were
all interested, and they all came; they looked me
over to see if there was anything fresh in my line.
Why, nothing ever happened in that village — I —
why, I was the only thing that had really happened
there for months and months and months; and
although I say it myself that shouldn't, I came
the nearest to being a real event that had hap-
pened in that village in more than two years.
Well, those people came, they came with that cu-
riosity which is so provincial, with that frankness
which also is so provincial, and they examined me
all around and gave their opinion. Nobody asked
them, and I shouldn't have minded if anybody
had paid me a compliment, but nobody did.
Their opinions were all just green with prejudice,
and I feel those opinions to this day. Well, I stood
that as long as — well, you know I was born cour-
teous, and I stood it to the limit. I stood it an
hour, and then the worm turned. I was the worm ;
it was my turn to turn, and I turned. I knew very
well the strength of my position; I knew that I
was the only spotlessly pure and innocent person

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SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY

in that whole town, and I came out and said so.
And they could not say a word. It was so true.
They blushed ; they were embarrassed. Well, that
was the first after-dinner speech I ever made. I
think it was after dinner.

It's a long stretch between that first birthday
speech and this one. That was my cradle-song,
and this is my swan-song, I suppose. I am used
to swan-songs; I have sung them several times.

This is my seventieth birthday, and I wonder
if you all rise to the size of that proposition, realiz-
ing all the significance of that phrase, seventieth
birthday.

The seventieth birthday! It is the time of life
when you arrive at a new and awful dignity ; when
you may throw aside the decent reserves which
have oppressed you for a generation and stand un-
afraid and unabashed upon your seven-terraced
summit and look down and teach— unrebuked.
You can tell the world how you got there. It is
what they all do. You shall never get tired of
telling by what delicate arts and deep moralities
you climbed up to that great place. You will ex-
plain the process and dwell on the particulars with
senile rapture. I have been anxious to explain
my own system this long time, and now at last I
have the right.

I have achieved my seventy years in the usual
way : by sticking strictly to a scheme of life which
would kill anybody else. It sounds like an exag-

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geration, but that is really the common rule for
attaining to old age. When we examine the pro-
gramme of any of these garrulous old people we
always find that the habits which have preserved
them would have decayed us ; that the way of life
which enabled them to live upon the property of
their heirs so long, as Mr. Choate says, would have
put us out of commission ahead of time. I will
offer here, as a sound maxim, this: That we can't
reach old age by another man's road.

I will now teach, offering my way of life to
whomsoever desires to commit suicide by the
scheme which has enabled me to beat the doctor
and the hangman for seventy years. Some of the
details may sound untrue, but they are not. I am
not here to deceive; I am here to teach.

We have no permanent habits until we are forty.
Then they begin to harden, presently they petrify,
then business begins. Since forty I have been
regular about going to bed and getting up — and
that is one of the main things. I have made it
a rule to go to bed when there wasn't anybody
left to sit up with; and I have made it a rule
to get up when I had to. This has resulted in
an unswerving regularity of irregularity. It has
saved me sound, but it would injure another
person.

In the matter of diet — which is another main
thing — I have been persistently strict in sticking
to the things which didn't agree with me until one

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SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY

or the other of us got the best of it. Until lately
I got the best of it myself. But last spring I
stopped frolicking with mince-pie after midnight;
up to then I had always believed it wasn't loaded.
For thirty years I have taken coffee and bread at
eight in the morning, and no bite nor sup until
seven-thirty in the evening. Eleven hours. That
is all right for me, and is wholesome, because I have
never had a headache in my life, but headachy
people would not reach seventy comfortably by
that road, and they would be foolish to try it.
And I wish to urge upon you this — which I think
is wisdom — that if you find you can't make seventy
by any but an uncomfortable road, don't you go.
When they take off the Pullman and retire you to
the rancid smoker, put on your things, count your
checks, and get out at the first way station where
there's a cemetery.

I have made it a rule never to smoke more than
one cigar at a time. I have no other restriction
as regards smoking. I do not know just when I
began to smoke, I only know that it was in my
father's lifetime, and that I was discreet. He
passed from this life early in 1847, when I was a
shade past eleven; ever since then I have smoked
publicly. As an example to others, and not that
I care for moderation myself, it has always been
my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never
to refrain when awake. It is a good rule. I
mean, for me; but some of you know quite well

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

that it wouldn't answer for everybody that's try-
ing to get to be seventy.

I smoke in bed until I have to go to sleep; I
wake up in the night, sometimes once, sometimes
twice, sometimes three times, and I never waste
any of these opportunities to smoke. This habit
is so old and dear and precious to me that I would
feel as you, sir, would feel if you should lose the
only moral you've got — meaning the chairman —
if you've got one: I am making no charges. I
will grant, here, that I have stopped smoking now
and then, for a few months at a time, but it was
not on principle, it was only to show off; it was
to pulverize those critics who said I was a slave to
my habits and couldn't break my bonds.

To-day it is all of sixty years since I began to
smoke the limit. I have never bought cigars with
life-belts around them. I early found that those
were too expensive for me. I have always bought
cheap cigars — reasonably cheap, at any rate.
Sixty years ago they cost me four dollars a barrel,
but my taste has improved, latterly, and I pay
seven now. Six or seven. Seven, I think. Yes,
it's seven. But that includes the barrel. I often
have smoking^parties at my house ; but the people
that come have always just taken the pledge. I
wonder why that is ?

As for drinking, I have no rule about that.
When the others drink I like to help; otherwise
I remain dry, by habit and preference. This

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SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY

dryness does not hurt me, but it could easily
hurt you, because you axe different. You let it
alone.

Since I was seven years old I have seldom taken
a dose of medicine, and have still seldomer needed
one. But up to seven I lived exclusively on allo-
pathic medicines. Not that I needed them, for I
don't think I did ; it was for economy ; my father
took a drug-store for a debt, and it made cod-liver
oil cheaper than the other breakfast foods. We
had nine barrels of it, and it lasted me seven years.
Then I was weaned. The rest of the family had to
get along with rhubarb and ipecac and such things,
because I was the pet. I was the first Standard
Oil Trust. I had it all. By the time the drug-
store was exhausted my health was established*
and there has never been much the matter with me
since. But you know very well it would be foolish
for the average child to start for seventy on that
basis. It happened to be just the thing for me,
but that was merely an accident; it couldn't hap-
pen again in a century.

I have never taken any exercise, except sleeping
and resting, and I never intend to take any. Ex-
ercise is loathsome. And it cannot be any benefit
when you are tired ; and I was always tired. But
let another person try my way, and see where he
will come out.

I desire now to repeat and emphasize that
maxim: We can't reach old age by another man's

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'.t II. ^^*

^ ,<w.jGO3MY0
MARlL TWAIN'S SPEECHES

road. My habits protect my life, but they would
assassinate you.

I have lived a severely moral life. But it would
be a mistake for other people to try that, or
for me to recommend it. Very few would suc-
ceed : you have to have a perfectly colossal stock
of morals; and you can't get them on a margin;
you have to have the whole thing, and put them
in your box. Morals are an acquirement — like
music, like a foreign language, like piety, poker,
paralysis — no man is born with them. I wasn't
myself, I started poor. I hadn't a single moral.
There is hardly a man in this house that is poorer
than I was then. Yes, I started like that — the
world before me, not a moral in the slot. Not
even an insurance moral. I can remember the
first one I ever got. I can remember the land-
scape, the weather, the — I can remember how
everything looked. It was an old moral, an old
second-hand moral, all out of repair, and didn't
fit, anyway. But if you are careful with a thing
like that, and keep it in a dry place, and save it
for processions, and Chautauquas, and World's
Fairs, and so on, and disinfect it now and then,
and give it a fresh coat of whitewash once in a
while, you will be surprised to see how well she
will last and how long she will keep sweet, or at
least inoffensive. When I got that mouldy old
moral, she had stopped growing,because she hadn't
any exercise; but I worked her hard, I worked

43 2

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SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY

her Sundays and all. Under this cultivation she
waxed in might and stature beyond belief, and
served me well and was my pride and joy for sixty-
three years; then she got to associating with in-
surance presidents, and lost flesh and character,
and was a sorrow to look at and no longer com-
petent for business. She was a great loss to me.
Yet not all loss. I sold her — ah, pathetic skele-
ton, as she was — I sold her to Leopold, the pirate
King of Belgium; he sold her to our Metropolitan
Museum, and it was very glad to get her, for with-
out a rag on, she stands 57 feet long and 16 feet
high, and they think she's a brontosaur. Well,
she looks it. They believe it will take nineteen
geological periods to breed her match.

Morals are of inestimable value, for every man
is born crammed with sin microbes, and the only
thing that can extirpate these sin microbes is
morals. Now you take a sterilized Christian — I
mean, you take the sterilized Christian, for there's /
only one. Dear sir, I wish you wouldn't look at
me like that.

Threescore years and ten!

It is the Scriptural statute of limitations. After
that, you owe no active duties ; for you the strenu-
ous life is over. You are a time-expired man, to
use Kipling's military phrase: You have served
your term, well or less well, and you are mustered
out. You are become an honorary member of the
republic, you are emancipated, compulsions are

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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

not for you, nor any bugle-call but "lights out/'
You pay the time-worn duty bills if you choose,
or decline if you prefer— and without prejudice —
for they are not legally collectable.

The previous-engagement plea, whkih in forty
years has cost you so many twinges, you can lay
aside forever; on this side of the grave you will
never need it again. If you shrink at thought of
night, and winter, and the late home-coming
from the banquet and the lights and the laughter
through the deserted streets — a desolation which
would not remind you now, as for a generation it
did, that your friends are sleeping, and you must
creep in a-tiptoe and not disturb them, but would
only remind you that you need not tiptoe, you can
never disturb them more — if you shrink at thought
of these things, you need only reply, "Your in-
vitation honors me, and pleases me because you
still keep me in your remembrance, but I am
seventy ; seventy, and would nestle in the chimney-
corner, and smoke my pipe, and read my book,
and take my rest, wishing you well in all affection,
and that when you in your return shall arrive at
pier No. 70 you may step aboard your waiting
ship with a reconciled spirit, and lay your course
toward the sinking sun with a contented heart. .

. THE BND

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J^LY ERS,TY OP MICHIGAN

3 9015 06208 6643

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